Property Management Data Model | FieldCamp

How a property management business is modeled in FieldCamp — Property, Unit, Tenant, Asset, and Maintenance Plan records linked to your core work orders.

A property management business has a shape no generic trades setup captures: the company that pays you is not the place you actually service, and behind one paying account sit dozens of buildings, units, tenants, and pieces of equipment.

FieldCamp's core records already run the commercial side of that business — the customer who pays, the Request a tenant submits, the Job that gets the work done, the Visits in the field, and the Estimate or Invoice that bills it.

On top of that foundation, the property management setup adds the one thing core cannot hold on its own: the physical portfolio.

A building hierarchy of Property, Unit, Tenant, and Asset, plus a Preventive Maintenance Plan, sits alongside your core records so every work order points at the exact suite, the exact rooftop unit, and the right person to call for access.

FieldCamp serves the maintenance and work-order slice of a property management operation — intake, scheduling, dispatch, and billing for service. Rent collection, lease accounting, and owner statements live in a tool like Buildium or Yardi, and FieldCamp runs alongside it.

What the core already gives you

Most of a property management business is already modeled, unchanged, by the records every FieldCamp account ships with.

Customers — the paying account is the property management company or the building owner, with separate property and billing addresses and per-account financial rollups already built in.
Requests — a tenant maintenance request is a near-perfect fit for the Request intake: it captures the issue, moves through triage, schedules an inspection, and converts into a Job, with win, loss, and duplicate outcomes.
Jobs — the work order itself, as a one-off, multi-day, or recurring job, with priority up to urgent, crew assignment, and a draft-to-paid lifecycle.
Visits — the on-site trip, with en-route to arrived to working to done tracking, location check-in, and completion gated on a captured signature.
Estimates & Invoices — quotes, bills, and payments, always billed back to the property management company.

The recurring maintenance schedule is core too: a recurring Job already repeats on a monthly, quarterly, or annual cadence.

The property management setup does not reinvent scheduling — it gives that recurring work a building, a unit, and a target piece of equipment to point at.

What property management adds

The specialized layer is five custom objects, each built on the same engine as the core records, with their own fields, links, lifecycle, and record pages.

Property — a serviced building

The physical site you service. It sits under the customer (the property management company or owner) and holds the units and equipment inside it.

Field	What it holds
Property name	The display name, such as "Maple Court Apartments".
Property address	The full street address of the building.
Property type	Residential or commercial subtype — single-family, multi-family, office, retail, industrial.
Square footage	Building size, for sizing service only.
Year built	Age of the building.
Access notes	Gate codes, lockbox, and key location for the crew.
Owner / PM company	Links the building to the paying customer.

A Property links up to one customer and links down to many Units and many Assets. It carries its own lifecycle, from onboarding through active service to offboarding.

Unit — a space inside a property

The space a work order is actually targeted at — apartment 4B, Suite 210, a storage bay. A Property has as many Units as it needs, each with its own attributes.

Field	What it holds
Unit label	"4B", "Suite 210".
Unit type	Apartment, studio, office, retail, storage.
Bedrooms / Bathrooms	Residential layout.
Rentable square footage	Commercial sizing.
Occupancy status	Occupied, vacant, or turn-in-progress.
Lease end date	Used for access and turn planning only, never billing.
Current tenant	Links to the Tenant record for this unit.

A Unit belongs to its Property and links to the Assets installed in it and the Tenants who have occupied it.

Tenant — the occupant and reporting party

The person who reports the issue and grants access — not the paying customer. A small record kept under the unit.

Field	What it holds
Tenant name	The occupant.
Phone / Email	Contact details, format-checked.
Preferred contact	Call, text, or email.
Move-in / Move-out date	Tenancy window.
Is current	Marks the active occupant.

A Tenant belongs to its Unit. It has no lifecycle of its own — it is a simple list of who is in each space.

Asset — serviced equipment

The HVAC unit, boiler, elevator, water heater, or fire panel that maintenance and warranties attach to. This is the equipment record at the heart of any maintenance-driven property.

Field	What it holds
Asset name	"Rooftop HVAC #3".
Asset category	HVAC, boiler, elevator, water heater, fire and life-safety, electrical, plumbing, generator.
Manufacturer / Model	Make and model.
Serial number	The unique identifier.
Install date	When it went in.
Warranty expiry	Drives a warranty countdown on the record page.
Location in property	"Roof, north bay".
Unit	Links to a unit, or stays empty for a building-shared asset.
Maintenance plan	Links to the Preventive Maintenance Plan that covers it.

An Asset belongs to its Property, can be pinned to a specific Unit, and is covered by a maintenance plan. It carries its own lifecycle from in-service through repair to retired.

Preventive Maintenance Plan — the recurring program

The wrapper that defines a maintenance program: its cadence, its scope, and the equipment it covers. The actual scheduled work is a core recurring Job — the plan is the record that ties the program together.

Field	What it holds
Plan name	"Quarterly HVAC PM — Maple Court".
Frequency	Monthly, quarterly, semiannual, or annual.
Scope notes	What each maintenance visit covers.
Next due date	When the next round is due.
Covered property	The building this plan serves.
Covered assets	The set of equipment the plan maintains.
Linked job	The recurring Job that carries out the work.

A plan covers one Property and many Assets, and it carries an active, paused, or ended lifecycle.

How these records link together

The core records reach into this layer through a few added links. A Job gains links to the Property, the Unit, and the specific Assets it services, so dispatch and history are pinned to the exact location.

A Request gains links to the Unit and Property and an issue category, so a tenant report carries that targeting all the way through to the Job it converts into.

The maintenance and service lifecycle

A tenant report and a planned maintenance round both end up as a Job, but they enter the model from different doors. The flow below shows both paths and how they close back on the equipment record.

Two lifecycles run inside the specialized records themselves. A Property moves through onboarding, active, and offboarding. An Asset tracks its physical condition through repair and retirement.

When an Asset is flagged for repair, an automation can notify the property manager. When a tenant Request is approved, it converts into a Job that carries its Unit, Property, and Asset links across.

And when every Visit on a Job is done, the Job is ready to bill the property management company.

Residential vs commercial

The same five records serve both sides of a property management portfolio. What changes is the field emphasis and the guardrails on the work, not the underlying model.

Residential

Property types are single-family, duplex, multi-family, or condo, with apartment numbers and bed and bath counts on each unit. One household per unit and high turnover means access usually runs through the tenant, and equipment is in-unit — furnace, water heater, AC — plus shared systems on a lighter, seasonal cadence. Because the tenant is often absent, the signature requirement on a completed Visit can be turned off.

Commercial

Property types are office, retail, industrial, or mixed-use, with suite numbers and rentable square footage on each unit and access through the property manager or building engineer. Equipment is heavy shared building systems — rooftop HVAC banks, elevators, fire and life-safety, generators — so the asset count per building is much higher and the maintenance cadence is dense and regulatory. A building-engineer sign-off and a photo requirement can be turned on as evidence on every completed Visit.

The switch between the two is the property type field and the guardrails on the Job's completion step — not a separate setup.

This is what lets the same model run from a single-truck operator servicing a few rentals to a multi-location franchise managing a commercial portfolio, residential or commercial, all tailored to how each account works.

Move-out inspections, quarterly HVAC checklists, fire-system tests, and habitability inspections are best built as job forms, not as long lists of fields. A form attaches to the maintenance or inspection Job, captures readings and a signature on site, and renders right on the work order.

Built on the customization engine

Every record on this page is built on the same engine you use to tailor FieldCamp to any business.

Property, Unit, Tenant, Asset, and the maintenance plan are custom objects with their own fields and links; the onboarding, repair, and plan lifecycles are stages and workflows you can rename and reorder; and each record page — the access notes, the warranty countdown, the related equipment table — is assembled from record layouts.

The portfolio hierarchy is the starting point for a property management account, and like everything in FieldCamp it is yours to extend.

Customers

The property management company or owner that pays — with separate property and billing addresses.

Requests

Tenant maintenance reports, triaged and converted into work orders.

Jobs

The work order, pinned to a property, unit, and the equipment it services.

Visits

The on-site trip, with access notes and configurable sign-off and photo evidence.

Estimates & Invoices

Quotes and bills, always billed back to the property management company.

Equipment

The serviced-asset pattern this setup builds on for HVAC, boilers, and elevators.

Coming from AppFolio

AppFolio is a different category of tool. It runs the rental portfolio — leasing, rent, owner statements, trust accounting — and carries a maintenance module alongside that.

FieldCamp does not replace the portfolio side. It runs the maintenance and field-work side: intake, scheduling, dispatch, on-site execution, and billing for the service itself.

So this crosswalk maps AppFolio's maintenance module — Properties, Units, Work Orders, Vendors, Inspections — into FieldCamp. The leasing, rent, and accounting records stay in AppFolio.

In AppFolio	In FieldCamp	Notes
Property	A Property custom object	The serviced building, sitting under the customer that pays.
Unit	A Unit custom object	The space a work order targets — apartment, suite, or bay — under its Property.
Resident / Tenant	A Tenant record — a custom object under the unit, or a contact	The person who reports the issue and grants access, not the paying account.
Owner	Customers	The property management company or building owner that the work is billed to.
Maintenance Request	Requests	Tenant intake — triaged, scheduled, and converted into a work order.
Work Order	Jobs	The work order itself, as a one-off, multi-day, or recurring job.
Vendor / Technician	Team Members	The crew assigned to the visit, carrying skills and service areas.
Inspection	A custom Inspection object or a Job Form	Move-out, turn, and habitability checks captured on the Job with readings and a signature.
Recurring / preventive maintenance	Service Agreements	The plan that schedules the next maintenance round, paired with the Preventive Maintenance Plan on this page.
Unit Turn	A Job, often grouped under a custom object	The make-ready run between tenants, scheduled like any other work order.
Invoice / bill	Estimates & Invoices	Quotes and bills for the service, billed back to the property management company.

What you gain. In AppFolio the maintenance module is one part of a larger portfolio system, shaped around it.

In FieldCamp the maintenance side is the whole product, and every record is yours to rename, extend, and relayout with custom objects & fields, so the work order, the building hierarchy, and the inspection form match how your crew actually runs.

FieldCamp does not handle rent collection, leases, or trust accounting — those belong in a portfolio tool like AppFolio. FieldCamp runs the maintenance and field-work side, and you can pair it with that tool or use it in place of the maintenance module alone.