Home
Your park at a glance — then today's list: who owes, what's due, what needs doing.
The top cards show how full the park is, what was billed and collected this month, who is past due, and what work is waiting. The list under them is your daily to-do list — tap any line and it takes you straight to the screen that handles it. The four big buttons are the jobs you do most.
Today's list
Park announcements
Post a note here and it shows on every resident's own page — water shutoffs, paving days, holiday hours. Residents see it the next time they check their balance.
Your public pages
Available lots page — share it anywhere. People see your open lots and can apply.
Resident page — residents check their own balance, send a repair request, and pay you.
Lots
Every lot, its rent, and whether someone lives there. Each lot carries its own rent — set it lot by lot.
Each lot carries its own pad rent, set by you. When a resident moves in, the rent they agreed to is saved on their lease, so changing a lot's rent later never changes a current resident's bill by surprise. Park-owned homes are tracked here too — if the park owns the home on a lot, its rent bills as its own line.
Residents
Who lives in the park, their lease, and what they owe — plus the people trying to move in.
Tap a name to open their record: everything they have been billed and have paid (their ledger), their lease, and every notice you have sent them. New people arrive through Applications and the Waiting list — those live on the tabs above, right where the people are.
People who applied through your available-lots page. Approve one and you can move them in on the spot.
Billing
Run the month's bills in one pass — lot rent, home rent, utilities, and add-ons — then see who owes what.
The billing run creates one bill per resident: lot rent, home rent if the park owns the home, utilities, and add-ons — due on the day you set in Park settings. It never charges anyone twice for the same thing, so you can run it again after adding late meter readings. New here? Use "Preview the bills first" — a rehearsal that shows every bill before anything is charged. The other tabs collect what is owed (Past due), take the meter readings that become utility charges, and manage the billing emails.
Monthly billing run
Bills every active lease for the month you pick. Lots already billed for that month are skipped, so running it twice never double-bills.
Who owes what
Everyone who owes, sorted by how long the money has been owed. Print a letter from here — it lands on the resident's notice record automatically — or set up a payment plan and watch it stay on track.
Payment plans
Read each lot's meters once a month — the billing run turns the readings into charges. If the park gets one big utility bill instead, enter it below and split it across the lots.
Read history for a lot
Resident emails
When you turn them on in Park settings, Orbit Lots writes each resident's bill-ready note, due-date reminder, and late notice for you and lines them up here.
Honest status: the emails below are prepared and queued. Sending switches on when email delivery is activated for Orbit Lots — until then they stay marked Queued and nothing is sent. Nothing here pretends otherwise.
Books
Money in and money out for this park. A simple register with a monthly profit & loss — hand the export to your tax preparer.
Resident bills and payments live in Billing and on each resident's ledger. This book is for everything else: what the park spends (utilities, repairs, insurance, taxes) and any other income. It adds up to a simple profit-and-loss for the month — a record book, kept plain. Owners only: managers never see this screen.
Profit & loss —
Work & duties
Repairs and jobs around the park — plus the recurring duties that keep it running, season by season. Finished work stays on the record — who did it, and when.
Residents can send in requests from their own page; you can add your own too. Assign a job, work it, and mark it done — the finished record keeps who did the work and when, so it never just disappears. If a job cost the park money, you can put the cost straight into the Books from the job itself (owners only). The Duties & seasons tab holds the recurring work — winterizing, grounds, system checks, and the paper renewals — each one scheduled, assigned, and recorded when it is done.
The recurring work of running a park — scheduled, assigned, and kept on the record when it is done. Overdue duties also show on your Home list.
Starter checklists
Standard park practice, written as starting points. Add a set, then edit or delete any line — every park differs, and these are yours to shape. For the renewal sets, change the month to your own renewal dates after adding.
All duties
Completion record
The park's contractors in one place — trade, phone, and the papers that expire. Work orders can name a vendor from this book. Expiring insurance and licenses show up on your Home list.
Park settings
Your park's details, how residents pay you, and the rates the billing run uses.
Your payment link is what residents tap to pay you — the money goes to your own payment account, never through Orbit Lots. Late-fee and billing-day settings apply park-wide. Your plan and your team live on this screen too — owners only, because they carry the money and the keys.
Your data — bring it in, take it out
Switching from another program? Bring your lots, your residents, and what they owe with you — free, and you check every row before anything is saved. And your records are yours: download the whole park any time.
Beginner guide
Running a mobile home park month to month, in plain words. Keep this page — it is the rhythm of the whole job.
The monthly rhythm
- Read the meters (near the end of the month, if your park meters utilities). Billing → Meters & park utility bills. If the park itself gets one big utility bill, enter it there too and choose how to split it.
- Run billing for the new month. Billing → Run billing & who owes. Use "Preview the bills first" until it feels routine — the preview charges nothing.
- Collect. Residents pay through your payment link, or however you take money — record each payment as it lands so the ledgers stay true. Home → Record a payment is the fast way.
- Remind. A short, kind reminder before the due date prevents most late payments. If you turned on billing emails in Park settings, the reminders are written for you and lined up under Billing → Resident emails.
- Follow up on late bills. After the grace period, check Billing → Past due. A late fee can be added there, a written late notice is one tap (it saves itself to the resident's record), and if someone needs time, write down a payment plan so you both have it.
- Close the month. Glance at Books: money in, money out, and how much of the park's utility bills the residents' charges covered.
Your first week
- Add every lot, with the rent you charge for it (Lots → Add lot). A list from your old system works too — Park settings → Your data → Bring in lots, residents, or balances.
- Put your payment link and billing rules in Park settings — that is what turns this from a notebook into a billing system.
- Move your residents in, one lease each (Residents → Add a resident). Include any deposit you are holding — it prints on their move-out settlement later.
- If some residents already owe money from before Orbit Lots, add it as an opening balance (Park settings → Your data → Import → Opening balances), so their first statement here is honest.
- Run the preview, check the numbers against your old records, then run your first real billing.
Records that keep themselves
Most of a park's record keeping builds itself while you work — you don't keep these twice:
- Every resident's ledger — every bill and payment, kept per resident, forever.
- The notices log — every notice and letter, saved on the resident's record with its date (letters you print save themselves).
- Work history — finished work orders keep who did the work and when.
- Meter history — every reading stays on the lot's record, month by month.
- The Books — the park's money in and out, with a monthly profit & loss and downloads for your tax preparer.
- Duty completions — under Work & duties, each finished duty keeps who did it and when.
What the app can't know is your paper calendar — license renewals, insurance, filings. Add those as Record keeping duties (Work & duties → Duties) with their real dates, and the duty itself becomes the reminder and the record.
Words we use, in plain language
- Lot rent (pad rent)
- What a resident pays each month for the ground their home sits on. Each lot's rent is set by you.
- Home rent
- Extra rent when the park owns the home on the lot, not just the ground. It bills as its own line so the two never blur.
- Pass-through
- A park cost passed to residents as a charge — most often utilities. The resident pays their share; the share is printed right on their bill.
- RUBS
- Ratio Utility Billing System — a way to split the park's one big utility bill across the lots: equally, by lot size, or by how many people live on the lot. You enter the park's bill under Billing → Meters; the billing run does the splitting.
- Ledger
- One resident's full bill-and-payment record: every charge, every payment, and what is still owed. If a number is ever questioned, the ledger is the answer.
- Billing run
- The action that creates a month's bills for everyone at once. It is careful: a bill line that already exists is never created twice.
- Grace period
- The days after the due date before a late fee applies. You set it in Park settings.
- Past due
- Money billed and not yet paid after its due date. The Past due tab ages it: not yet due, then 30, 60, 90 and more days.
- Deposit & settlement
- The deposit you hold for a resident, and the final statement when they move out: last charges and payments, how the deposit was applied, and the refund or balance that ends the account.
- Acknowledgment
- When a resident confirms on their own page that they saw a notice, Orbit Lots keeps the date and time. It is a record of seeing — not a signature, and it is never called one.
One honest note: this software keeps the records. Rent law, notices, and deposits carry real rules that vary by state — when a situation gets serious, a local attorney is worth the call.