Serve a document to your tenants

Serve a document gives one document to every tenant on a tenancy, one step at a time. You start it on the property’s page.

1. Open the property from Properties, then open Notices and letters.
2. Under Serving documents, tap Serve a Document.
3. Under What do you want to serve?, choose the document and tap Continue. A certificate with no file in the app asks for one: tap Choose PDF or Photo.
4. Under Who it’s for, check the tenants and tap Continue.
5. Under How, read whether each tenant gets it by email, as a courtesy copy or on paper. Tick anyone under Give it on paper instead?, then tap Continue.
6. Under Preview, check each email and the document, then tap Continue.
7. Tap Serve by Email, or Send Copy by Email where no email serves it, and confirm.

Each tenant emailed gets the PDF and a link to their own page, where they can say they’ve received it. The Serve step says the day an email that serves it counts as served.

For a certificate, the deposit’s prescribed information or a rent increase notice, the app counts an email as serving it on one of two records. Either the tenant agreed to notices by email, or you recorded the tenancy agreement’s email clause. Otherwise it’s a courtesy copy, and the document still has to be given on paper. See Ask your tenants to agree to notices by email.

Give it on paper, and record how

When nobody gets an email, the Serve step is where you record it.

1. Print it with Open PDF, Download PDF or Print or Share, whichever your device shows.
2. Give it to each tenant by hand, by leaving it at the property, or by post. The Information Sheet goes by hand or by post only.
3. Choose How it was given and enter When (London time). For tracked post, enter Delivered on too.
4. Add any Details, such as a tracking number, then tap Record Service and confirm.

The form says the day it counts as served, and the record goes in the evidence file.

For the Information Sheet, a certificate or the deposit’s prescribed information you gave before using the app, choose It was already given outside the app at the How step. Then record it the same way: nothing is sent.

Check its status

1. Under Serving documents, tap the document.
2. Under Status, read each tenant’s state, such as Delivered, Received or Bounced.
3. For a tenant still to be given it on paper, tap Record How It Was Given. For tracked post, tap Record the Delivery Date once the tracking shows it.

Under Certificate of service, Open PDF shows what was served, its SHA-256 fingerprint, to whom, how and when, and each delivery and page event. It is a record, not proof: a court decides whether a document was served.

The Information Sheet

Where a tenant needs it and has none recorded, Notices and letters shows Information Sheet not recorded, with Serve the Information Sheet. If the official PDF isn’t in the app yet, the flow says so: print GOV.UK’s copy and give it on paper.

What the law says

• For tenancies that began before 1 May 2026 and already had written terms, the Renters’ Rights Act Information Sheet 2026 had to be given by 31 May 2026.

Try it in the sample account