Getting Started: Onboarding, Modules, and Your Dashboard

VerticalRent adapts its sidebar and header to the parts of the platform you actually use. This article walks through onboarding and module selection, customizing your sidebar, and every card and shortcut on your portfolio dashboard.

Go to your Dashboard →

Choosing your modules during onboarding

When you first sign up, onboarding asks which modules you want active. Each one unlocks a matching section of the sidebar:

• Tenant Screening — rental applications, criminal and eviction reports, and rental history (credit and income verification are coming soon)
• Vacancy Advertising — the Listings section for publishing and sharing vacant units
• AI Lease Generation — state-specific leases drafted by AI in seconds
• Maintenance Management — coordinating service pros and tracking work orders
• Online Rent Collection — automated rent, plus your income and expense ledger

After onboarding you land on a celebratory welcome screen that shows the free AI credits added to your account and a few things you can do with them right away, then drops you on your dashboard.

How modules control your sidebar

Dashboard, Properties, and Settings are core sections and are always visible, no matter which modules you picked. Everything else is gated by your module selection:

• Tenant Screening unlocks Applications and, as long as Applications is visible, Background Checks
• Vacancy Advertising unlocks Listings
• AI Lease Generation unlocks Leases
• Maintenance Management unlocks Maintenance
• Online Rent Collection unlocks Income & Expenses

Background Checks is a "coupled" item — it automatically hides itself if you ever hide Applications, since checks only make sense alongside the applications they screen.

Customizing your sidebar with More Free apps

Below your main nav, the More Free apps launcher lets you add or remove sections beyond your module picks. It has two groups:

• Features — the same five module-driven items above (Tenant Screening, Vacancy Advertising, AI Lease Generation, Maintenance Management, Online Rent Collection), each with an Add / Remove toggle
• More sections — secondary items that are never part of onboarding: Contacts, Messages, My Network, Find Help, and Reports & Taxes

Clicking Add pins a section so it shows up permanently in your sidebar; clicking Remove hides it again. Changes save immediately and apply right away — no page reload needed. The launcher badge shows how many extra sections you currently have pinned.

Collapsing the sidebar

On desktop, hover the divider between the sidebar and main content to reveal a small arrow button that collapses the sidebar down to icons only (or expands it back). Your preference is remembered on that device for next time. On mobile, the sidebar opens as a full-screen drawer from the menu icon in the header.

Reading your dashboard

At the top of the dashboard, a portfolio summary bar shows your month-to-date rent collected, your overall occupancy rate, and a link to full reports. Below it, up to a few attention banners appear only when relevant:

• Late rent payments — how many payments are currently overdue
• Open maintenance requests — how many work orders still need attention
• Low occupancy — shown when occupancy drops below 80% and at least one unit is vacant

Four KPI cards summarize your whole portfolio:

• Total Units — with a breakdown of how many are occupied vs. vacant
• Monthly Rent Roll — total rent from occupied units only
• Pending Applications — applications in submitted or under review status; click through to Applications
• Open Maintenance — requests that are open or assigned; click through to Maintenance

Below the KPIs, two side-by-side cards show your five most recent applications (with a color-coded status badge for submitted, under review, approved, denied, screening ordered, or screening complete) and up to five open maintenance requests (with a colored priority dot for emergency, high, normal, or low, plus the current work-order status). Each links out to the full list, and if maintenance is all caught up you'll see a green all-clear message instead of an empty list.

AI Quick Actions

An AI Quick Actions panel gives one-click shortcuts into the most-used AI features, each showing its credit cost:

• Generate Lease (25 AI credits) — jumps to AI lease generation
• Score Applicant (10 AI credits) — jumps to Applications for AI risk analysis
• Write Listing (4 AI credits) — jumps to Properties to start an AI-written listing description
• Triage Maintenance (3 AI credits) — jumps to Maintenance for AI classification of requests

The header: search, notifications, and the Add menu

The header stays with you across every landlord page:

• Search (⌘K on desktop) — searches properties, units, tenants, applications, and maintenance requests as you type; when the box is empty it shows quick links to Properties, Applications, and Maintenance instead
• Upgrade — a shortcut to your subscription plans on the Credits page
• AI Credits widget — your current AI credit balance, always one click from the top-right
• Notifications — the bell icon opens your recent notifications
• Help & support — the question-mark icon opens a menu with the Help Center, Ask John (VerticalRent's AI assistant), What's New, and Contact Support

The green Add button opens a quick-actions menu with five shortcuts so you never have to hunt for the right page:

• Invite Applicant — send a rental invite to a prospect (highlighted as the default action)
• Add Property — list a new rental property
• Add Unit — jump to Properties to add a unit to an existing property
• Add Tenant — create a lease and onboard a tenant directly
• Maintenance Request — log or AI-draft a maintenance request