We’ve built a property management tool for small landlords
Hello Property118 readers: I’m William Harford. I co-founded Harthing with Neil Carthy and Adam Saul.
We’ve built a property management platform specifically designed for landlords with small portfolios that they’re self-managing, and are trying to keep up with the endless stream of new regulations and tax requirements www.harthing.co.uk.
Between us, we have over 50 years in financial services, two chartered accountants, a Cambridge mathematician building the platform, and Adam is even a director of Rochdale AFC. All three of us are landlords who self-manage. We built this because the tools available for someone managing one or two properties without a letting agent appear to have gaps helpful to landlords.
We have tried to build something that is intuitive and helps landlords deal with this increased burden of maintenance, compliance, finances, and documents in one place, everything timestamped and Making Tax Digital categorised.
The idea is that your records should prove you’ve been managing your property properly, and producing that proof shouldn’t require an archaeology project through your inbox.
What’s live when we launch on 12 May:
• Property records, maintenance logging, compliance tracking, document storage
• Financial transactions categorised for MTD from the point of entry
• Immutable Accountability Record — every action hash-chained, nothing editable or backdatable
• Evidence Bundle — one click, full chronological proof of everything you’ve done for a property
• Compliance dashboard with expiry alerts
It does use AI, and it reads your gas cert and pulls the expiry date, so you don’t have to type it. It doesn’t have a name badge, and it doesn’t offer opinions.
I have three questions for readers:
1 – Where do you actually keep your gas safety certificates right now, and could you find one in under two minutes if someone asked?
2 – With MTD now live, Section 21 going on 1 May, and Awaab’s Law on the horizon, do the tools that exist feel adequate?
3 – Did you know you’ve got until 31 May to serve the official GOV.UK Information Sheet to every existing tenant, or it’s a £7,000 fine?
I am happy to answer questions about what we’ve built, and happy to be told we’ve missed something obvious.
Many thanks
William Harford
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Member Since April 2026 - Comments: 1
3:03 PM, 28th April 2026, About 3 hours ago
Hi William,
Shawn here — I built Doorkeep (doorkeep.co.uk), which sits in a similar space. Good to see more people building for the small landlord rather than just reskinning accountancy software.
To answer your three questions honestly:
1. Gas certs are in a folder on my Google Drive, and no, I probably couldn’t find the right one in under two minutes.
That’s exactly why I built compliance tracking with expiry alerts into Doorkeep — it’s the thing landlords don’t think about until they get the phone call.
2. The tools that exist are either too expensive for someone with 1-3 properties, or they focus on one piece of the puzzle.
MTD software that doesn’t help with compliance. Compliance tools that don’t help with MTD. I think there’s room for several of us solving this properly at a price that makes sense for small portfolios.
3. I didn’t know about the 31 May deadline for the Information Sheet — genuinely useful, thank you.
That’s the kind of thing that catches landlords out because nobody tells you until it’s too late.
Interesting approach with the hash-chained accountability record. Out of curiosity, is that aimed at dispute resolution, or more about giving landlords confidence that their records would stand up if challenged?
Looking forward to seeing how things develop post-launch. The more tools that exist for small landlords, the better the space gets for everyone.
Cheers,
Shawn