Send and receive messages with contacts

Messages keeps every conversation with a tenant, vendor, or applicant in one place, so the whole history lives in Wealtharu instead of your personal phone and inbox. You send by email, by text, or both, and replies come back into the same thread. These are for tenancy matters.

Messages appears in the menu only when your account has it turned on. If you do not see it, ask your account owner to enable it.

Open your messages

Go to Messages in the menu. You see a list of conversations, newest first, each showing the contact name, a preview of the last message, and an unread count when someone has replied. Select a conversation to read the full thread and reply at the bottom.

Start a new message

1. On the Messages page, choose New message.
2. Pick who to message. You can switch how you find them: - By tenant. Each tenant shows their most recent lease so you pick the right person. - By property. Choose a property to see its current tenants, with an Older tenants list (with the dates of each past tenancy) for anyone who has moved out. - Vendors. Anyone in your vendor directory. - Applicants. People who applied. Each one shows what they applied for, so you can tell them apart. When you have applicants across more than one property, a Property filter appears above the list so you can narrow it to one building. It starts on All properties, and only lists properties that actually have applicants.
3. Choose how to send: Email, Text message, or both. A channel is offered only when that contact has an email or phone number on file.
4. Write your message. Use a Quick fill template (rent reminder, maintenance visit, inspection notice, welcome, payment received) as a starting point, or type your own. Templates fill in the contact's first name for you.
5. Choose Send message. You land in the conversation with your message saved at the top.

Message an applicant from their application

You do not have to come to Messages first and search for an applicant by name. Open the application under Applications, and in the Decision panel choose Message applicant. The composer opens already addressed to them, so you can start typing straight away.

• The recipient shows at the top as To with their name. Choose Change if you picked the wrong person, and the full contact list opens exactly as it does for a new message.
• When an application has more than one applicant, the button reads Message lead applicant, and each applicant card further down the page gets its own Message action. A co-applicant is a separate person with their own conversation, so their replies stay in their own thread.
• The button appears only when your account has Messages turned on.

How replies come back

The contact does not message you personally. They reply to Wealtharu, and Wealtharu files the reply in the right conversation:

• Text replies come back automatically when text messaging is set up for your account.
• Email replies come back when email replies are set up for your account.

When a reply arrives, Wealtharu notifies you (by email, text, or in the app, following your notification settings) with a link straight to that conversation, and the conversation shows an unread badge until you open it.

Photos and files in a conversation

When your account has attachments turned on, a conversation carries files as well as words. This is how a tenant shows you the leak instead of describing it.

• What arrives. A photo or short video a tenant texts you, and a file attached to an email reply, land in the thread with the message. Photos and videos show in the conversation. A PDF or other file shows as a named file you can open.
• What you can send. Choose Attach a file in the reply box to send photos, short videos, or a PDF. Add a message to go with them, then send as usual. Your files go out with the email or text, and stay on the thread as a record.
• What is accepted. Photos, short videos, and PDFs, up to 25 MB each. Anything else is refused when you pick it, and Wealtharu tells you which file and why, before you send.
• If you do not see attachments. The feature is off for your account, or the sender's file type was not accepted. A file that arrived but is not being shown is still named on the thread, so nothing is lost silently. Ask your account owner to turn attachments on.

On the Wealtharu phone app, the same thread shows the same photos. Select a photo to see it full screen, and select a PDF to open it in your phone's own reader, where you can save or forward it.

Leave an internal note for your team

Sometimes you need to tell a teammate something about a contact without messaging the contact. In the reply box (or when composing a new message), switch from Reply to Internal note. A note is saved into the thread with a distinct look, and the contact is never sent a copy. Anyone on your team who can see the conversation can read it.

You can also pick teammates under Notify teammates so they get a notification with a link straight to the thread. Tapping a name works, and so does typing @ and their name in the note (for example @Sam). Only teammates who can see this conversation can be picked.

A notified teammate also sees it in Messages itself: the Messages tab shows a count for them, and the conversation carries a For you marker until they open it. Opening the thread clears it for them only, so a teammate who has not looked yet keeps their marker.

Automated messages in the thread

When your account has the comms timeline turned on, automated messages Wealtharu sends to a tenant (rent reminders, payment notices, renewal offers) also appear in that tenant's conversation as read-only entries labelled with what they were. The thread then shows every touchpoint with the tenant, human and automated, in one place. Ask your account owner to enable it if you do not see these entries.

Good to know

• Messages here are tenancy communications rather than marketing, so they do not carry a marketing unsubscribe footer. Texts still honour STOP. For marketing consent and unsubscribe, see Manage messaging consent, unsubscribe, and delivery status.
• A tenant conversation stays in one thread even after a lease renews, because it follows the person.
• Your full message history is included in your data export, and a contact's conversation is removed when you delete that contact.

Set up the reply channels

Sending works as soon as Messages is on. To receive replies in the thread, an account owner sets up the inbound channels (a Twilio number for text, and an inbound email route for email). The steps live in the team setup runbook.