Organisation settings and notifications

This guide is for agency accounts. Only an organisation Owner or Admin can open Organisation > Settings and change these defaults. Members and Viewers cannot change organisation settings.

Direct landlords use Portfolio knowledge in their account settings and property-level repair information instead. They do not have the agency workflow, branch routing or central inbox controls described here.

How organisation defaults are applied

Maintenance policy follows this order:

  1. Organisation defaults apply across the agency.
  2. A branch policy can override the organisation for properties in that branch.
  3. A property policy can override both for that property.

The most specific saved policy is used. Workflow stages are independent, so enabling one stage does not silently enable the others.

Knowledge has its own merge rules. Read What Lettie knows before repeating the same contact at several levels.

Organisation knowledge

Under What Lettie knows, use Organisation knowledge for information that is genuinely useful across the whole agency. Keep contractor telephone numbers and working hours in Contractors, where one update applies everywhere the contractor is linked.

You can also set an Assistant name:

  1. Enter the name under Name.
  2. Select Save assistant name.

Leaving the name blank uses Lettie. A custom assistant name requires your agency's own WhatsApp number, which is part of the white-label add-on. Agencies using Lettie's shared number continue to use the Lettie name.

Checks before referral

Under Maintenance > Before a report reaches your team, turn on Require safe electrical isolation checks before referral if you want Lettie to guide a tenant through safe checks for a routine circuit trip.

This does not delay an unsafe situation. If isolation is not safe or access is not possible, the report is referred immediately.

Set office hours

  1. Select Set office hours.
  2. Enter each day's opening and closing time in UK time.
  3. Choose whether UK bank holidays should be treated as closed.
  4. Select Save office hours.

Office hours tell Lettie whether an urgent problem should go to the team or use the emergency rules, and when to tell a tenant the office will reopen. If no hours are saved, office state is unknown and time-based behaviour is not applied.

Configure out-of-hours emergency handling

Under When nobody is available, turn on Use these rules out of hours to create an ordered emergency fallback.

Use Only for things that cannot wait to keep planned repairs in the normal maintenance workflow. Under While the office is open, choose:

  • Your team handles it to keep the emergency list for closed hours; or
  • Still use the list below to apply it to urgent cases while open as well.

You can also turn on Try another contractor of the same trade first. Lettie tries an available alternative linked to the same trade before moving down the list. A contractor with no working hours is treated as available at any time.

Add the fallback steps in the order they should be tried:

  • Give them the contractor's number anyway shares the chosen contractor's number, with a warning that they may not answer out of hours.
  • Give them your out-of-hours number is usable only when that number has been configured.
  • Contact the landlord is skipped when the property has no usable landlord contact. Lettie contacts the landlord; it does not reveal the landlord's number to the tenant.
  • Tell them your team will pick it up is the catch-all and stops the ladder.

Lettie uses the first step it can carry out and skips a step whose required contact is missing. Save a genuine out-of-hours number before relying on that step.

Important: Emergency work never waits for a quote approval. The emergency ladder protects the tenant when a repair cannot wait; the planned-work approval workflow below controls ordinary contractor work.

Choose a contractor and quote workflow

Under Contractor & quote approvals, start with the closest preset:

  • Not using Lettie for this sends the report to your team and turns all automated stages and follow-up off.
  • We arrange the work, Lettie handles approvals captures quotes, routes approvals to the agency and follows up, without automatically contacting the contractor or asking the tenant to confirm a time.
  • Landlord approves the bigger jobs captures quotes and follows up. By default, amounts up to £150 are approved automatically, amounts up to £1,000 go to the agency, and anything above goes to the agency then the landlord.
  • Lettie handles it end to end also contacts the contractor, collects availability and asks the tenant to confirm a time, using the same starting approval bands.

Review every stage after choosing a preset:

  • Contractor engagement contacts the contractor and gathers availability.
  • Check the times before the tenant sees them holds times offered by a contractor until your agency releases them. Times entered by the agency go straight to the tenant.
  • Tenant confirmation lets the tenant select from offered times.
  • Quote capture reads the contractor's quote and adds it to the report.
  • Quote approval sends the quote through your value bands.

To notify a tenant about a quote, enable Tell the tenant when a quote has been received. The price is not included unless you also turn on Include the price.

Build approval bands

Each Up to amount is inclusive. Lettie checks bands from the lowest limit upwards, then uses Anything above as the final catch-all.

For each band choose:

  • Approve automatically
  • Agency only
  • Landlord only
  • Agency then landlord

Select Add threshold to split a band. Avoid gaps or overlapping limits; the ordered inclusive bands and final catch-all should cover every quote.

Set Chase after (hours) for reminders and Give up after (hours) for the approval deadline. Under If there is no landlord, choose what happens when a landlord approval step has no usable recipient:

  • Send it to the agency
  • Approve it
  • Stop and wait

This fallback is for a missing landlord in the planned approval chain. It is separate from the out-of-hours emergency ladder.

Select Save workflow settings when the full combination is correct. Turn off entirely disables the automated workflow.

Route email notifications

Under Email notifications, enter the Default notification email. This address receives organisation-wide report emails on top of personal account notifications.

Under Who is told about a new report, choose:

  • Everyone who can see the property to notify the relevant branch members;
  • The assigned member, otherwise the central inbox to prefer the property's assignee; or
  • The central inbox only to suppress individual report email and WhatsApp alerts.

For either central-inbox mode, enter Central inbox for reports. If it is blank, Lettie uses the default notification email.

For Tenant update emails, choose Only when something needs a human to hold routine AI-handled replies, or Every tenant message for a complete email stream.

Then choose which messages to send:

  • New or escalated reports
  • Tenant updates to default inbox
  • Tenant updates to assigned member
  • Compliance expiry reminders

Select Save notification settings.

These controls decide organisation routing. Each person's choices under Account & preferences > Notification preferences decide which channels they personally use; changing one does not rewrite the other.

Last Edited: August 10, 2026