Managing a Lease

A centralized lease database for commercial real estate gives landlords and asset managers one reliable place to store, track, and manage every lease detail: documents, key dates, tenant contacts, compliance items, and critical notes without digging through email threads or scattered spreadsheets. By keeping everything organized and searchable in a single system, you can reduce missed deadlines, improve team coordination, and respond faster to tenant needs while maintaining cleaner records across your entire portfolio.

How to Handle Sub-Leases and Lease Assignments

When a tenant assigns or transfers a lease to another entity, such as in the case of an assumption or sub-lease, STRATAFOLIO provides two options to correctly manage the change.

You can either modify the existing lease to reflect the new tenant or close out the old lease and create a new one, depending on the lease terms.

Option 1: Handle the Sub-Lease by Modifying the Existing Lease

If the lease terms remain unchanged and the new tenant is simply assuming the existing lease, follow these steps:

1. Add the New Tenant and Contact
   • Navigate to Contacts and add a new Contact for the incoming tenant.
   • Navigate to Tenants and add a new Tenant record.
     
2. Edit the Existing Lease
   • Search for the lease in STRATAFOLIO and select Edit Lease.
   • Replace the old tenant with the new tenant.
   • Under the Invoicing section, update the Accounting Customer to the new customer record synced from QuickBooks.
     
3. Document the Change
   • In the Lease Closing Notes, explain the situation briefly (e.g., “Lease assumed by Burlington Coat Factory after Jo-Ann Fabric bankruptcy”).
   • Upload the assignment or sub-lease documentation to the Files tab of the lease record.
     

This approach ensures that the lease continues seamlessly under the new tenant while maintaining the financial and historical integrity of the record.

Option 2: Handle the Sub-Lease by Closing and Creating a New Lease

If the terms of the lease are changing, or if your accounting process requires a clean start:

1. Close the existing lease by marking it as Expired.
   
2. Create a new lease for the new tenant.
   Use the article: How to Add a Lease and Assign a Unit.

This method provides a clear delineation between the two tenant agreements for reporting and audit purposes.

Best Practice

• Always include supporting documentation (e.g., bankruptcy filings, assumption agreements) in the Files tab.
• Double-check the QuickBooks Accounting Customer link to ensure proper synchronization.
• Note any relevant financial or legal transitions in the Lease Notes to maintain a complete audit trail.
  

How to Track and Manage Tenant COIs

Keeping track of Certificates of Insurance (COIs) from tenants is an important part of risk management in commercial real estate. STRATAFOLIO makes it easy to store, monitor, and update COIs so you know every tenant meets their insurance requirements.

This article explains how to track and manage tenant COIs within STRATAFOLIO.

Why Tracking Tenant COIs Matters

Tenant COIs protect both you and your tenants by confirming that proper insurance coverage is in place. If a policy lapses or coverage limits are not met, you could face unnecessary risk. By centralizing COIs in STRATAFOLIO, you ensure policies stay current, documents are organized, and you get alerts before coverage expires.

Where to Manage COIs as a Landlord

You can manage tenant COIs directly from the lease record in STRATAFOLIO. Each lease has an Insurance tab where you can upload, review, and update COI information.

To get to the Insurance tab for a specific lease:

In the left sidebar, go to Operations. Select Leases. Find the lease you want to update (use the search or dropdown filters if needed). Navigate to the i (info) icon for that lease to open the Lease page and see the lease’s details. This will open the Lease Abstract view.

Select the Insurance tab at the top of the page.

On the Insurance tab, you can Add a COI or Add Insurance Requirement, adjust visible columns and save report views from Report Settings, and export the table to Excel/CSV/PDF.

Adding a COI

1. From the Insurance tab, select Add a COI. Upload the COI document provided by the tenant.
   
2. Enter key details such as:
   
   • Insurance provider
     
   • Policy type and limits
     
   • Effective and expiration dates

Once saved, the COI record becomes part of the tenant’s lease profile.

Monitoring Policy Expirations

STRATAFOLIO helps you stay ahead of expiring policies with built-in tracking. Each COI entry includes the expiration date, and the system highlights upcoming expirations so you know when to follow up with tenants. This proactive tracking helps you avoid lapses in coverage.

You can customize your alerts so you receive multiple notifications ahead of a policy expiring. To do this, navigate to your Profile in the top right corner of the screen.

Open the Alert Settings tab, and turn on Insurance Alerts. Make sure to select Save Changes. Once enabled, you’ll get timely reminders before the policy expiration date, giving you plenty of time to request updated COIs from tenants.

For step-by-step instructions, see our Knowledge Base article: How to Change Your Alert Settings in STRATAFOLIO.

Encourage Tenant Portal Use

To simplify COI tracking, we recommend giving your tenants access to the Tenant Portal. Once tenants have access, they can view their lease information, make payments, and respond to insurance reminders directly in STRATAFOLIO. For directions, see our Knowledge Base article: How Do I Give a Tenant Access to Their Portal.

Tenants can also upload their own COIs securely through the portal. This ensures you receive the latest documents quickly, without relying on back-and-forth emails. Learn more in our article: Uploading and Viewing Documents in the Tenant Portal

By encouraging tenants to use the portal, you reduce administrative work, improve compliance, and maintain a complete record of insurance documentation inside STRATAFOLIO.

Reporting on COIs

Use STRATAFOLIO’s reporting tools to see COI compliance across your portfolio. The Tenant Insurances Report provides a portfolio-wide view of tenant coverage, expiration dates, and compliance status. This makes it simple to identify tenants who need follow-up.

Accessing the Tenant Insurances Report

To open this report, navigate to the left-hand navigation bar, select Operations, then select Tenant Insurance. This brings you to the Tenant Insurances Report page.

At the top of the report, you will see filter dropdowns for Organizations, Entities, Assets, Buildings, Units and Tenants. Use these filters to focus only on the insurance records you want to review. For example, you can filter by a single building or view insurance data for your entire organization.

Customizing Your Report View

Navigate to the Report Settings button in the upper-right corner of the page to adjust what data appears in your report. Within Report Settings, you can:

• Show or hide columns using checkboxes.
  
• Rearrange columns by dragging them into a new order.
  
• Save multiple report views for different purposes (e.g., one for your property managers, another for your compliance team).
  
• Update or reset saved reports as needed.
  
• Set a default view so your preferred setup loads automatically each time.

Encourage your team to create and save custom report profiles. You can save a significant amount of time when running recurring COI compliance checks.

Once your report is set the way you want, download the data into Excel, CSV, or PDF. The exported file will match the columns and the order you applied on screen.

Best Practices

• Require tenants to submit updated COIs before their existing policy expires.
  
• Review COIs regularly to confirm coverage limits meet lease requirements.
  
• Use reports to share compliance status with property managers or ownership groups.
  
• Keep all COI documents in STRATAFOLIO to avoid lost or misplaced files.
  
• Remember that some owners may also need to show proof that tenants maintain proper insurance. Tracking COIs in STRATAFOLIO helps owners work more efficiently and proactively with their own insurance providers.

Summary

With STRATAFOLIO, tracking and managing tenant COIs becomes straightforward. You can upload documents, monitor expirations, update records, and run compliance reports all in one platform. By centralizing COIs, you reduce risk, stay compliant, and save time managing insurance requirements across your portfolio.

Upload or Request a COI from Tenants

With STRATAFOLIO, you can automate your Certificate Of Insurance (COI) and insurance policy management. You can also upload tenant COI in STRATAFOLIO directly through the lease record or allow tenants to upload through their portal. It is as simple as following the steps below:

• Once your lease is created, Add the Insurance Requirements as stated per your lease
• Add a Certificate Of Insurance for your tenant
• Add the Insurance Policies to the COI
• Get visual and email alerts before your policy will expire
• Use STRATAFOLIO to request COI from tenants software, ensuring you receive updated certificates before expiration dates.

What is a COI?

Often, landlords, property managers, or vendors request a COI as proof of insurance before work begins or a lease is signed. The Certificate of Insurance (COI) is a document issued by an insurance company that proves insurance coverage for a tenant or vendor. This document offers a safety net in case of problems like property damage, injury, or other unpredictable issues. A standard COI includes policies such as general liability insurance, workers compensation, and auto coverage. COIs are often required by commercial lease agreements, making it the tenant’s responsibility to provide the certificate when a new insurance policy is issued or renewed. However, these requirements can vary between different lease agreements.

Add The Insurance Requirements

Once your lease is created, you will add one or multiple insurance requirements to a lease. Each lease varies on the specific insurance requirements. Common insurance requirements include general liability, property coverage, and workers compensation insurance.

To add an insurance requirement to your lease, follow the steps below:

• To find the Tenant’s Lease, where you’ll add the insurance requirement, navigate to the menu options on the left navigation Properties -> Units.
• Type the Tenant’s name in the search box, then select the […] button of the desired Tenant, and select the View Lease option. This way, you will view the current lease for that tenant.

• Once In the tenant’s Lease Details, navigate to the Insurance tab and then on the + Add Insurance Requirement button. This will allow you to add an insurance requirement to this lease.

• This form only has one required field: the Policy Type. We advise you to add as much information as you have available. The more information you have, the easier it becomes for you and your team to find answers.

Add the COI and Insurance Policies

Now that you have added all your insurance requirements to your lease, you can add the COI you received from your tenant. If your tenant has access to their tenant portal, they can upload the COI themselves.

When uploading a COI, make sure to confirm whether the landlord or property manager is listed as an additional insured.

Note

If the Tenant’s Lease has no insurance requirements, you or your tenant cannot upload a COI. Add at least one insurance requirement to the Tenant’s lease to add a new COI containing insurance policy details that can satisfy that requirement.

• To add a COI, you don’t need to go anywhere else. Although, you can upload the COI from multiple locations. In this example, we’ll upload the COI directly from the Lease Insurance tab. To do this, choose the other button called Add New COI on the Tenants tab within your lease and select the View Tenant Details button to access the Tenant’s details view.

• Once you select the button, a new form will show up. You can drag and drop your COI in the form or select the form to choose the location of the COI to be uploaded.
• Once you are ready to proceed, select the process button. STRATAFOLIO’s secure and proprietary machine-learning algorithms will do their best to match the insurance agent, policy, and requirement stated in the lease and the COI.
• Note: STRATAFOLIO uses a proprietary machine-learning model trained by our software engineers, so rest assured your data is secure. We do not use public-facing AI models or LLMs such as ChatGPT.

• Once our machine-learning model finishes doing the hard work for you, you will see a new form containing the prepopulated COI information, and we’ll do our best to match all the insurance policies in the COI to your lease requirements.
• If the form is not fully populated, we apologize for the inconvenience. This means something went wrong, and we failed to process your COI. At this point, you can try again or manually populate the rest of the form.
• Suppose you want to learn more about COIs. In that case, you can read our Top 7 Commercial Real Estate Insurance Misconceptions article. Joe Vens explains the Common Definitions and Misconceptions of the lease requirements, insurance policies, and COIs.
• You cannot save the form until you populate all the required properties. These properties show up with a red asterisk * at the end of the property name. If you try to save without populating one of them, we will show a red warning below the property. Although many properties are not required, we advise you to add as much information as you have available. The more information you have, the easier it becomes for you and your team to find answers.

Follow the steps below in order to save the new form.

• Ensure you View the Uploaded COI by selecting the View COI button.
• Verify or update the Certificate of Insurance Detail section, confirming all coverage details are accurate.
• Verify or update as needed the Insurance Policy Detail section of the form.
• Navigate to the verified checkbox to ensure you verified the form’s content, and then select the Save button to ensure the form is saved.

Getting Visual Alerts

STRATAFOLIO provides you with a single location where you can view each one of your leases to quickly know which insurance policies are expiring, along with each policy’s expiration date and coverage details.

• Navigate to Operations -> Tenant Insurance on the left navigation bar and scroll to the right.
• You can also create custom reports of the data you want to show, by selecting the settings button.

Lease Requirement Statuses

The Tenant Insurance view displays all the insurance requirement statuses previously added to each of your active leases and those without insurance requirements. You can access this view by navigating to the left navigation menu on the Operations -> Tenant Insurance menu options.

STRATAFOLIO provides you with the requirement statuses listed below to help you identify which leases or lease insurance policies need further attention from your team. Ultimately, if catastrophe strikes, the insurance policy required by your lease agreement and purchased by your tenant will be the one thing that will provide the funds needed to repair damages, so we want you to ensure the requirements listed in your lease agreement are met. Always ensure your tenant’s COI includes sufficient liability coverage to meet the lease requirements.

Requirement Status	Requirement Status Meaning
No Requirement in Lease	This status is used when an active lease does not have any insurance requirements in place. If your leases do not require your tenants to carry insurance, you can learn more about why your leases should require insurance and What’s the Purpose of Requiring Certificates of Insurance from Tenants.
No COI Attached	This status is used when a lease requirement has been added to a lease. But, a COI containing an insurance policy matching the insurance requirement specified in the lease agreement has not been uploaded for that lease.
Unsatisfied	This status is used when a lease requirement has been added to a lease. However, a COI containing an insurance policy matching the insurance requirement specified in the lease agreement has not been uploaded for that lease.
Has Active Policy	This requirement status is used when a lease requirement does not specify any minimum coverage amounts. Yet, a COI has been uploaded containing an active insurance policy matching the requirement policy type required by that lease. STRATAFOLIO strongly recommends adding minimum amounts to all the lease requirements in an active lease to provide guidance to your tenants. You want to avoid a tenant taking out a policy with low coverage limits just to satisfy your requirement.
Partially Satisfied	This requirement status is used when a lease contains a lease requirement specifying both a Minimum Each Occurrence Limit amount and a Minimum Aggregate Limit amount. Yet, a COI was uploaded to that lease containing an insurance policy that contains only one of those amounts. The amount listed in the policy matches or exceeds the minimum amount listed in the insurance requirement in order to consider this requirement partially satisfied.
Satisfied	This requirement status is used when the lease requirement specifies one or both a Minimum Each Occurrence Limit amount and a Minimum Aggregate Limit amount, and a COI was uploaded with an insurance policy that matches or exceeds the minimum amounts listed in the lease requirement.

Getting Email Alerts

NOTE: Make sure your tenant Contact has a valid Email Address so they can receive email alerts when an Insurance Policy is about to expire. The tenant must have access to the tenant portal in order to get the alerts. Administrators, managers, and property managers will still get alerts. If you do not want to receive any of these alerts, please check out our How to Change Your Alert Settings in STRATAFOLIO knowledge base article.

Important

If the COI form has the Agent’s Email and the property Email Contact For COI Renewal? is left blank, or you select Yes, then that Agent will also receive an email alert. If you select No, the insurance agent on file will not get any alerts.

• An expiring insurance policy will generate email alerts until that insurance policy is updated, or the lease is expired.
• If the policy is not updated, STRATAFOLIO will send multiple emails.
  • The first email will trigger 30 days before the Insurance Policy expires.
  • The second email will trigger 7 days before the Insurance Policy expires.
  • The third email will trigger on the day the Insurance Policy expires.
  • The fourth email will trigger 3 days after the Insurance Policy expires.
  • The fifth and final email will trigger 7 days after the Insurance Policy expires.
• In this email, you will receive information regarding each certificate in reference to the above timeline.

How to Input a Lease Extension/Amendment Into STRATAFOLIO

You have a lease extension executed, how do you input that extension/amendment into STRATAFOLIO? 

Keeping track of expiration dates and lease escalations in STRATAFOLIO is imperative to keeping an updated portfolio. The lease already entered has the security deposit, the lease options to renew, and copies of the original lease. There is no need to start over and re-enter all of that. Here are the steps to Extending a lease. 

1. If the Lease Expiration has passed or the type of lease has changed, Change the Lease Status 
2. Extend the Lease Expiration Date 
3. Add Lease Rate Escalations
4. Extend or Add the Operational Expense period if needed
5. Add Contract to Files 

Instead of inputting a new lease, we want to extend the current lease for historical purposes. The only reason why we would suggest expiring the old lease and adding a new lease is if lease terms drastically changed or for a tenant acquiring someone else’s lease.

Changing the Lease Status: 

When the expiration date passes, STRATAFOLIO automatically marks a lease as Expired. Locate the lease under Left Hand Navigation > Operations > Leases > i

Note: The Leases table will display all leases, current, future, and expired, inputted into STRATAFOLIO. Expired leases will not show under the Building or Unit views if a newer lease has been entered. They will also not show on the Rent Roll if they have expired. 

After you have chosen the proper lease, under the Lease Abstract select the Edit Lease button. 

Modify the Lease Status drop-down to the appropriate status.

Change Expiration Date: 

Modify the Lease End Date to the new end date on the amendment or extension.

If the tenant has executed an option, update the Lease Renewal options with (option # executed) so it is clear how many options remain. Then choose Save.

Add Lease Rate Escalations: 

Now that the lease end date is extended, the Lease Rates can be modified. The Lease Term or End Date must be extended to be able to enter the new escalations. You cannot add Lease Rates past the end of the Lease Term.

Navigate to the Lease Rates Tab, then select Add a Lease Rate.

STRATAFOLIO will automatically calculate the dates for the next year and populate them. Modify dates as needed. 

Enter the new Lease rate amount, type, and whether the lease rate is confirmed or not. In the lease rate notes, STRATAFOLIO’s Onboarding team enters the document where the lease rate is located. Please use the note section for whatever notes you need for this specific lease rate period. The Late Fees and Due Date should pull through from previous rates. The Income Item should also pull through – but be sure it is the correct Income Item you would like to utilize for invoicing. Select Save or select the Add Another function to continue adding escalations. 

NOTE: These dates must be within the dates entered for the Lease Term. The Lease Rate end date can not go past the lease’s end date or before the lease’s start date.

Extend Operational Expenses if Needed:

Navigate to the Op-Exp tab and the pencil button next to the appropriate year – extend the period expiration if needed. You can only extend this period until the end of the Lease Term. 

Note: STRATAFOLIO Onboarding recommends utilizing a new Operating Expense period each year. At the end of this year, you can utilize our cloning feature to copy over the same sub-categories you have used. Find directions for that feature at How to Clone Operating Expenses or CAM in STRATAFOLIO. After cloning, you can update the invoice amounts for the next year as needed.

Add Contract to Files: 

Select the Files tab. Select the Upload button.

Upload up to 10 files at a time by dragging and dropping or selecting the button to browse and find the file. 

Choose the file type and write a description if needed. You can choose whether the tenant can access this file if you have an active tenant portal. For more information, check out this Knowledge Base article about Lease File Upload Options.

Now that you have updated the lease with the new expiration date, new escalations, new operating expenses, and new files, it’s important to use the current lease to maintain complete historical data on each tenant. This will save you from having to re-enter data that has already been entered. To ensure that the escalations are correct, run the Rent Roll.

Unconfirmed Lease Rate Alerts and What It Means

An alert in your email means something in STRATAFOLIO needs your attention. If this is your first time getting a Lease Rate Unconfirmed Alert, it may be confusing as to why it was sent. There are several reasons, as we will explain in detail.

Understanding alerts

When entering Lease Rates, you may have noticed a small checkbox after the amount column. If you did not check it when entering the Lease Rate, that may be the reason why. If you leave this unchecked, you will get these alerts 30 days before the lease will escalate. 

One reason for this box not being checked by the Onboarding team is normally for the leases that escalate by an unknown rate, i.e., by the Consumer Price Index or CPI. When entering these lease rates, the future can be unknown, but STRATAFOLIO still needs to alert you that an escalation may occur. It is important to show on the Rent Roll that the lease will escalate even if the amount is unknown until it happens. When this box is unchecked, STRATAFOLIO will send an alert that there is an Unconfirmed Lease Rate. 

In the emailed alert, select the View link, which will bring you directly to the Lease in question. Look in the Lease Rates tab for the escalating Lease Rate. Select the pencil icon to edit the Rate. 

If the Base Rent amount needs to be modified due to a different CPI rate, change it. Then choose the Lease Amount Confirmed Box and Save. 

There are other reasons that the Onboarding team will leave the Confirmed Lease Rate box unchecked. Including unclear rates in the lease, such as an “Annual increase of no less than 2%.” The team will enter a 2% escalation, but the amount may be different when the time comes. The alert is to help you verify that you are charging the correct amount and that you are letting the tenant know what the new amount will be 30 days prior.

Lease File Upload Options

Keeping track of important paperwork such as leases, loans, certificates of insurance, and countless other files requires a savvy filing system for the commercial real estate property manager. Because our focus at STRATAFOLIO is to offer solutions to streamline and simplify the management for commercial real estate owners, our software offers the option to upload and store files in a secure, organized location.

A few things to note:

All the file types cannot exceed 30 MB in size.

The accepted file types are:

• Image files (jpg, jpeg, bmp, and gif)
• Other files (doc, docx, pages, ppt, pptx, key, rtf, txt, csv, xls, xls, numbers, pdf)
• Video file (mp4 and mov)
• Compressed files (zip)

Where to View and Upload Lease-Related Files

To begin uploading files related to a specific lease, navigate to the Operations Menu, Then select Leases.  This view will show all the leases in your organization. This view will include old and current leases. Click on Information Button “i”, this will open the Lease Abstract of the lease you would like to view.

Once on the Lease Details page, select the Files tab.

Managing Files

From the Files tab you can:

1. Upload a File
2. Edit a File
3. Allow Tenant Access to a File
4. Download & View a File
5. Delete a File

1. Upload a File

To upload a file, from the Files tab, click on the blue Upload a File button and the Upload a File popup window will appear. In this window you have the following options:

• Gray Drag & Drop Rectangle – Drag or drop up to 10 files at a time into the gray rectangle or click in the rectangle to browse for the file on your computer.
• Upload Description – You can add a description to the file in this section if needed.
• Tenant Permissions  – This allows you to select what kind of access you give to the tenant in the Tenant Portal. Discussed in the next section.
• File Upload Restrictions – Hover your mouse pointer over the “i” to see limitation details on the types of files that can be uploaded. In general, files may be no more than 30MB and should be standard file types such as: .jpg, .pdf, .docx, .xls, etc.

After you have selected the file(s) to upload, click Upload File at the bottom of the popup and wait for the page to refresh. The file(s) you uploaded will appear at the bottom of the file list.

By default, all files are initially set to Hide access and cannot be viewed by the Tenant in the Tenant Portal. You can update each file with View, Edit, or Delete access if you choose. If you do not change the file access, it will remain hidden from the tenant’s view. Access levels and how to download & view files are discussed below.

2. Edit a File

To edit the file description, click the Edit pencil button next to the file to open the Edit File Information popup. In this popup window, you can edit the file description, delete the file and select the Tenant Access Level/Permissions for the file.

3. Allow Tenant Access to a File

Tenant access permissions can be edited by clicking the Edit pencil button next to the file you would like. Once you click the Edit button, the Edit File Information popup will appear and you can select Tenant Permissions from a dropdown list.

File Access Permissions

There are four file permission levels for files in STRATAFOLIO. Detailed information for each level is below. For more information on file uploads and what the tenant view is like in the Tenant Portal, click here.

• View: View access allows a tenant to download and view the file only. The tenant cannot edit the file description or delete the file.
• Edit: Edit access allows a tenant to download and view the file and edit the file description. However, the tenant cannot delete the file.
• Delete: Delete access allows a tenant to download and view the file, edit the file description and delete the file.
• Hide: If the landlord has selected to hide access to a file, the tenant will not see the file in their list in the Files tab of the Tenant Portal.

NOTE: The landlord can change the access level for files that the tenant uploads after they are saved by the tenant. A tenant cannot change the file access permissions. Access permissions can only be changed by a STRATAFOLIO User.

• Landlord File Upload: When a landlord or the landlord’s agent initially uploads a file to STRATAFOLIO, it will have Hide access and will not be visible to the tenant in the Tenant Portal.
• Tenant File Upload: When a tenant initially uploads a file to STRATAFOLIO, the tenant will have full access to view edit & delete the file until the landlord changes the permissions.

4. Download & View a File

To view a file, click on the Download Button next to the file. This will download the file to your computer where you can open and view it. You can also select the Preview button and it will open up in another window.

5. Delete a File

To delete a file, open the Edit File Information popup by clicking the Edit button next to the file.

Click Delete File in the lower right corner. Before the file is permanently removed, you will be asked to confirm that you want to delete it.

NOTE: Only a user with Administrator Rights is able to Delete a File from STRATAFOLIO.