The monthly owner maintenance report: what to send and why

Property owners rarely read work orders. They read the owner statement, and they read the one message that explains it. When that message is missing, the statement raises the questions for you: why was this $640, what was the second plumber visit, is the water heater fixed or patched. A short maintenance report sent with the statement each month answers them before they are asked.

This post covers what to put in that report, how to keep repairs and improvements apart, and a layout that fits on one page. It is general information. The owner’s accountant decides how anything is treated for tax.

What the report has to answer

Every owner wants the same four things from a month of maintenance, whatever the size of their portfolio:

1. What was spent, on what, and why
2. What is still open, and when it will be done
3. What is coming up that will cost money
4. What they need to decide

If the report answers those four, it is doing its job. Anything else belongs in the work orders, available if they ask.

One page, six sections

Keep repairs and improvements apart

Owners and their accountants care about a line most maintenance reports blur: the difference between a repair and an improvement. The IRS, in Publication 527 on residential rental property, says an expense for repairing or maintaining a rental may generally be deducted, while an expense for an improvement has to be capitalized. It describes an improvement as one that results in a betterment to the property, restores it, or adapts it to a new or different use.

The same publication is direct about records: separate the costs of repairs and improvements, and keep accurate records. You don’t decide which is which for the owner. You make the decision easy by labelling each job plainly, for example “replaced a failed valve” next to “replaced the whole water heater”, and attaching the invoice.

Show tenant-paid repairs on their own line

Sometimes a tenant pays for a repair and takes it off the rent, either under your agreement with them or under a state repair-and-deduct rule. Publication 527 gives the example of a furnace a tenant had repaired while the owner was out of town: the repair bill paid by the tenant counts as rental income, and the owner can deduct it as a rental expense. Put these on their own line with the receipt, so the statement and the report agree.

Include the times, not just the costs

For an emergency, the owner’s second question after “how much” is “how fast”. Write the timeline in a sentence: reported at 11:40 PM ET, plumber on site at 1:05 AM ET, water off and leak fixed by 2:30 AM ET, drying started the next morning. That sentence explains a night rate better than any note on the invoice, and it shows the work was done inside your state’s rules. The repair timelines by state page has the clocks that apply.

Flag what keeps coming back

Two visits for the same problem in the same unit in a few months is worth a line of its own. It tells the owner a replacement may be cheaper than another repair, and it gives them time to plan for it. The post on repeat repairs covers how to spot them from your work orders.

Send it the same way every month

• Send it on the same day each month, with the owner statement
• Use the same sections in the same order, even when a section is empty
• Attach invoices and before-and-after photos for anything over your approval limit
• Keep the words plain: what happened, what it cost, what is next

A report that looks the same every month is fast to read and fast to write. Most of it comes straight from your work orders if each one records the dates, the vendor, the amount and the tenant’s confirmation. The work order template has a field for each.

Where Now Ours fits

Every message and booking is recorded on the case with who it went to and when, and a job counts as done when the tenant confirms the fix or the vendor or technician marks it done with a photo or note. You can export your cases any time as CSV or JSON, so the dates and times for the report are already there. You set the spend limit for each property, and owner approval links are included.