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Check-out and Deposit Return Reconciliation

Example prompt: "When a tenancy is approaching its end date in our Google Sheet, schedule the check-out clerk on the calendar, log the returned condition report, and draft the deposit-return statement comparing inventory to check-out condition. Route any disputed deductions to the office in Slack before the 10-working-day clock starts."

The Problem

The end of a tenancy is the period when the office is most likely to get sued. The deposit-return statement has to compare the move-in inventory to the check-out condition, propose deductions that are demonstrable in the clerk's report and proportionate to the office's published pricing, and go out within the deposit scheme's window. A single deduction line that cannot be evidenced against the inventory is the line the adjudicator finds for the tenant, and a statement sent before the manager has a quote for the material damage tends to become a statement the office has to revise twice. None of this is a once-a-quarter event — it is once a week or more across a hundred units, every one of which arrives at the same moment as a move-in for the next tenant.

How GloriaMundo Solves It

We build a workflow that handles two phases of the check-out: the scheduling phase three weeks before tenancy end, and the statement-drafting phase after the clerk's report comes back. In the first phase, the workflow matches the regional inventory clerk, finds a calendar slot on the tenancy end date or the working day after, drafts the clerk and tenant emails, and updates the tenancies sheet. In the second phase, an LLM step reads the clerk's structured condition report and drafts the deposit-return statement as a Drive doc — the proposed deductions are priced against the office's Deduction Pricing tab rather than invented, and material-damage lines say "requires quote" rather than naming a number that the office cannot defend at adjudication. The prescribed-information wording at the bottom of the statement comes from the office's approved Standard Templates tab. A conditional step routes any statement with a material-deduction line to the #check-outs Slack channel because those are the cases that merit a phone call before the email goes out. The manager reviews every statement before anything is sent.

Example Workflow Steps

  1. Trigger (integration): Scheduled — every weekday at 8am, walks the Tenancies sheet.
  2. Step 1 (conditional): Branch on check_out_status — NULL paths into scheduling; 'Report returned — awaiting reconciliation' paths into statement drafting.
  3. Step 2 — Branch A (integration): Match the regional clerk, find a Calendar slot on tenancy_end_date or the working day after, create a tentative event, draft Gmail to clerk and tenant.
  4. Step 3 — Branch A (integration): Append a Check-outs Schedule row; update the Tenancies row's check_out_status to 'Clerk scheduled'.
  5. Step 4 — Branch B (integration): Read the returned clerk report and the move-in inventory link from the Tenancies row.
  6. Step 5 — Branch B (llm): Draft the deposit-return statement as a Drive doc — line-by-line reconciliation, proposed deductions priced from the Deduction Pricing tab, prescribed-information wording from Standard Templates.
  7. Step 6 — Branch B (integration): Draft the tenant-facing Gmail with the headline figure and a link to the doc.
  8. Step 7 — Branch B (conditional): If any line is 'Tenant deduction — material', post a Slack message in #check-outs naming the property and suggesting a tenant phone call before the email goes out.

Integrations Used

  • Gmail — drafts the clerk and tenant scheduling emails and the deposit-return covering email
  • Google Sheets — Tenancies, Inventory Clerks, Check-outs Schedule, Check-out Reports, Deduction Pricing, Deposit Return Statements, Standard Templates
  • Google Drive — the per-tenancy '/Lettings/Check-outs/' folder holding the deposit-return statement doc
  • Google Calendar — tentatively books the clerk's 90-minute slot
  • Slack — the #check-outs channel for material-deduction flags

Who This Is For

Letting agents and managing agents handling residential deposit returns where the office is the named agent on the deposit scheme and where a defensible, evidence-backed statement matters because the adjudicator's bar is higher than the tenant's.

Time & Cost Saved

A defensible deposit-return statement takes a property manager forty-five to ninety minutes per tenancy — reading the clerk's report, looking up the office's pricing, finding the prescribed-information wording, drafting the covering email. Across twenty check-outs a month that is two working days reclaimed, and the bigger return is in the adjudications won — every line that ties to the inventory and the office's pricing is a line the adjudicator can find for the office, and every "we charged £400 for cleaning because that's what we always charge" line is one that loses at adjudication.