Online Lease Applications

Step-by-step 9 min read Updated July 2026

No more printed application packets: from an inquiry, you email the applicant a personal link, they complete a guided online form — applicants, occupants, pets, vehicles and documents — and everything lands back on the inquiry as structured records you can review. This article walks the full cycle from sending the form to converting the inquiry into a lease, and it dwells on the one rule that trips people up more than any other: the application data only carries across when the form is completed before you convert. Get that sequence right and the whole intake flows onto the lease for you; get it wrong and you're re-entering everything by hand. No prior REDA experience is assumed — every term is defined as we reach it.

Getting there. Open the inquiry (App Launcher → REDA → the Inquiries tab → open the inquiry) and run the Send Lease App Form action from the record.
Access you'll need. Creating and editing inquiries requires the REDA - Property Leasing User permission set (or a sibling set). Viewing and working the application records is granted by the lease-application extension's own access. The applicant needs nothing — they complete the form as a guest, with no login.

Using REDA Sales Cloud edition? This article shows the Platform edition, where prospects are Inquiry records (the standard Salesforce Lead in Sales Cloud). Everything else — the fields, the steps and the behaviour — is the same unless noted. See REDA editions.

How the online application works

An inquiry is REDA's record of a prospective tenant's interest in a unit — it might have come in from your website, a tour request or a phone call. The online application picks up from there: instead of handing the prospect paper, you send them a guided form that writes straight back onto that inquiry.

The form lives on your organization's public service website as a guest-accessible page — the applicant doesn't log in, and doesn't need an account of any kind. When you send the application, REDA builds a personal web address by attaching the inquiry's own reference to your configured form address. That's what makes each link unique: two applicants working two different inquiries get two different links, and each one's answers land on the right inquiry with no chance of crossing wires.

The applicant moves through a short wizard, one step at a time:

Consent. The applicant agrees to the terms before anything else.

Applicant details. Name, contact details and identity information.

Occupants. Anyone else who will live in the unit.

Pets and vehicles. Details of each.

Document upload. Pay stubs, identification and anything else you require.

Confirmation. The applicant submits, and the form records its completion.

Sending the application

From the inquiry, run the Send Lease App Form action. REDA emails the applicant their personal form link and begins tracking the application's progress on the inquiry itself. From that moment on, everything the applicant does — accepting the consent, opening the form, submitting it — is reflected back on the inquiry, so you watch the whole thing progress without leaving REDA and without chasing the applicant for an update.

You send the link once. What happens next is in the applicant's hands, and the timeline below is how you follow along.

The status timeline

As the applicant works through the form, the inquiry stamps a series of timestamps and a status, so you always know where things stand. Read them together as a story: consent accepted, form opened, form completed — each with its own date and time, and a status that moves toward Application Completed as the applicant finishes.

The Lease Application Status field is the one to watch, because a later step in this article hinges on it. It moves through a fixed set of values:

Lease Application Status	What it means
Draft	The application has been started but not yet submitted — the applicant is mid-form, or has opened it and not finished.
Application Submitted	The applicant has submitted the form.
Application Approved	The application has been approved on your side.
Application Completed	The application is finished and ready — this is the value the conversion carry-across depends on.
Cancelled	The application was cancelled and won't proceed.

Alongside the status, the inquiry keeps three timestamps and an error surface:

On the inquiry	Set when
Consent date/time	The applicant accepts the consent step
Form Opened date/time	The form first loads
Form Completed date/time	The applicant submits the finished form
Application error flag and message	Something went wrong receiving the submission — the message holds the detail

What the applicant submits

A completed form writes structured records back onto the inquiry — not just a PDF to read, but data you can review and, later, carry into the lease:

Record	What it holds	Where it lands
Lease Applicant (one per person)	Name, contact details, identity and address information, employer and income, their role, and whether they're the primary applicant	The inquiry
Pet	Pet details	Tagged to the inquiry
Vehicle	Vehicle details	Tagged to the inquiry
Files	Uploaded documents	The inquiry's files

Applications carry sensitive personal information. A lease application collects identity, employment and income details for each applicant. Treat these records with care — make sure only the people who need to review applications can open them, and follow your organization's data-handling policy.

REDA does not run screening. The application collects documents; it does not perform a credit or background check. Any screening remains your own process, run however your organization runs it — the form gathers what your reviewers need, but the decision is yours.

The documents the applicant uploads appear in the inquiry's files, ready to open. A primary applicant record is flagged as such, so you can tell at a glance who is the lead applicant and who are the co-applicants and occupants — a distinction that matters at conversion, because the primary applicant is treated differently from the rest.

Reviewing before conversion

Before you convert, open the inquiry and review what came in — the applicants and their details, the occupants, the pets and vehicles, and the uploaded documents. This is the moment to confirm the form is genuinely complete, because completion is exactly what the next step depends on. It's worth checking the Lease Application Status reads Application Completed here rather than assuming it — a half-finished application can look nearly done at a glance, and the difference decides whether the conversion in the next step carries any of this data across.

Converting: what carries across

Converting an inquiry turns it into a lease — the standard step that promotes a prospect into an actual leasing deal. When you convert a completed application, REDA doesn't just create a bare lease and leave the application behind; it reads the intake and threads it onto the new lease, so the applicants, their roles and their pets and vehicles all arrive already attached. Here's what becomes what:

Application data	Becomes	Notes
Primary applicant	Updates the lease's primary contact	Employer, income and identity details are carried onto the contact
Each co-applicant or occupant	A new contact, plus a role on the lease	The role comes from the application — for example Co-Lessee or Guarantor
Pets	Re-parented to the lease	—
Vehicles	Re-parented to the lease	—

Complete the form before you convert. This carry-across only happens when the inquiry's Lease Application Status is Application Completed at the moment you convert. Convert too early and you get a lease with none of the application data attached — the applicants, roles, pets and vehicles all stay behind on the inquiry. Confirm completion first, then convert.

Worked example: Aisha's application

Inquiry Aisha Rahman for Meridian Court #101:

The agent runs Send Lease App Form. Aisha's email carries her personal link; the consent stamp appears when she agrees, and the opened stamp when the form loads.

Aisha completes it. She adds co-applicant Raj as a Co-Lessee, an occupant, one cat and one car, and uploads pay stubs and ID. The status reaches Application Completed; the applicants, pet, vehicle and files all sit on the inquiry.

The agent reviews and converts. The lease is created; Aisha updates its primary contact; Raj becomes a contact with a Co-Lessee role; the cat and car re-parent to the lease.

The anti-example. Had the agent converted at step 1, the lease would have been bare — Aisha's application data would have stayed on the inquiry.

Where to go next

Web Inquiries & Tour Requests — where the inquiry came from in the first place.
From Application to Move-In — what happens to the lease after you convert.
The Resident Portal — where the tenant goes once they've moved in.
Publishing Properties to Your Website — the listings that drive the inquiries.

Frequently asked questions

The application wasn't completed before you converted. The carry-across only fires when the inquiry's Lease Application Status is Application Completed at conversion time — convert too early and the data stays on the inquiry.

Something went wrong receiving a submission. The inquiry's application error message holds the detail; read it there to see what to correct.

No. The application collects documents only; there's no screening built in. Screening remains your own process.

No. The form is a guest page on your public service site — the applicant opens their personal link and fills it in without any account.

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