What Software Tracks Gas Safety and Electrical Compliance Across a Rental Portfolio?
How landlords and letting agents track gas and electrical compliance across a UK rental portfolio, and where Checker fits.
Portfolio compliance
What Software Tracks Gas Safety and Electrical Compliance Across a Rental Portfolio?
No single system automatically tracks gas and electrical compliance across a whole rental portfolio. Certificate-producing software like Checker records and files each check as your engineer completes it. Tracking every property’s expiry date across the portfolio is the job of a property management system, or a disciplined calendar fed by each engineer’s reminders.
Get Started FreeCertificate-producing software and portfolio-tracking software are two different tools. Your engineer’s software creates and files the CP12 or EICR. Tracking every property’s expiry date across a portfolio is usually a property management system’s job, or your own calendar, kept current by the renewal reminders each engineer sends.
If you hold five properties or five hundred, the shape of the problem is the same. Every one of them has a gas safety check due on its own date, and if it has an electrical installation, an EICR due on a different date again. Nobody hands you a single reminder that covers the lot. You either build a system to hold all of those dates in one place, or you find out a certificate has lapsed when a tenant, an insurer, or a housing authority asks for it.
This guide sets out what you are actually required to track, nation by nation, what a system for tracking it needs to do, and where certificate-producing software like Checker fits into that picture and where it stops.
What exactly are you required to track, property by property?
Gas safety and electrical safety are governed separately, and electrical safety rules differ by UK nation. Generalising England’s rules to the rest of the UK is the most common mistake in this area, so treat each row on its own.
| Nation | Gas safety check | Electrical safety check (EICR) |
|---|---|---|
| England | Annual check by a Gas Safe registered engineer. A copy goes to an existing tenant within 28 days of the check, or to a new tenant before they move in. The record is kept for 2 years. | Inspected and tested at least every 5 years. The report goes to the tenant within 28 days, and to the local housing authority within 7 days of a written request. In force since 1 June 2020, applying to new tenancies from 1 July 2020 and to existing tenancies from 1 April 2021. |
| Wales | Same GB-wide gas rules as England, run under the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998. | Inspected at least every 5 years (locally called a Periodic Inspection Test). A copy goes to the contract-holder within 14 days. A legal requirement since 1 December 2022 for new occupation contracts, extending to existing contracts from 1 December 2023. |
| Scotland | Same GB-wide gas rules as England. | Inspected at least every 5 years under the Repairing Standard. The report is kept for 6 years and a copy is given to an incoming tenant before their tenancy starts. This has applied since 2015. |
| Northern Ireland | Annual check by a Gas Safe registered engineer, under Northern Ireland’s own regulations. A copy goes to the tenant within 28 days of the check. | Inspected at least every 5 years. The regulations came into force on 1 April 2025 for new tenancies, and existing tenancies needed a first inspection by 1 December 2025. A copy goes to the tenant within 28 days. |
Two things are worth holding onto from that table. Gas safety runs on the same rules across England, Wales and Scotland, and Northern Ireland’s own regulations land in the same place: an annual check, a 28 day window to hand over the record. Electrical safety does not: four different start dates, and Wales alone uses a 14 day window instead of 28. A system that tracks one nation’s rules correctly can still get another nation wrong if you hold property on both sides of a border.
None of this is legal advice, and where a detail could not be confirmed against the current official guidance it has been left out rather than guessed. Check the relevant government source in the Authoritative sources list below for your own properties, particularly if a report has flagged remedial work, which can shorten the next inspection interval on that property specifically.
Does responsibility shift to you if a letting agent runs the property?
Not automatically. Gas safety guidance is direct on this: the management contract between you and your agent should say who is responsible for arranging maintenance, the safety check, and keeping the record. If the contract gives that job to the agent, the agent carries the same duties a landlord would. If the contract is silent or unclear, the responsibility stays with you as the property owner.
That makes the contract itself part of your compliance record, not a separate document. If you manage a portfolio through more than one agent, or through a mix of agents and self-management, it is worth knowing which arrangement applies to which property before you assume the reminder chasing is someone else’s job.
What does tracking compliance across a portfolio actually require?
A single certificate is simple: one date, one document, one engineer. A portfolio turns that into a different kind of problem. What you need from a system, whether that is dedicated software or a disciplined spreadsheet, comes down to four things.
- A due date per property, not per certificate type. Gas and electrical dates rarely line up, so the system needs to hold both without merging them into one renewal date.
- Somewhere to hold the actual document, not just the date, so you can produce the certificate itself on request rather than proof that a reminder was sent.
- A reminder that reaches you before the deadline, with enough notice to book an engineer, not a notification on the day something lapses.
- A record of who did the work, because a check carried out by someone who was not Gas Safe registered, or not a competent person for electrical work, does not satisfy the obligation even if the paperwork looks complete.
Two different jobs, two different tools
This is where most of the confusion sits. “Compliance software” gets used to describe two different products, and they solve different halves of the problem.
| Category | Certificate-producing software | Portfolio-tracking software |
|---|---|---|
| Who uses it | The gas or electrical engineer carrying out the check | You, the landlord or letting agent |
| What it does | Records the inspection, generates the CP12 or EICR, stores it digitally | Holds every property’s expiry dates in one place, across every engineer you use |
| What it sends | A reminder to the customer before that one job is due again | A view across the whole portfolio, usually as one module inside a wider property management system |
| Where Checker sits | This is Checker’s job | Not Checker’s job |
An engineer’s software being good at the first column does not make it a substitute for the second. If you rely on each engineer’s own reminder to cover the whole portfolio, you are trusting as many separate systems as you have engineers, none of which know about each other’s properties.
Where does Checker fit, and where does it stop?
Checker is software used by gas and heating engineers and electricians to produce and file Landlord Gas Safety Records, Electrical Installation Certificates, Minor Electrical Installation Works Certificates and Electrical Installation Condition Reports. When your engineer uses it, the certificate is generated on the job, stored digitally, and an automated reminder goes out roughly a month before the next check is due, by email, text or letter, to whichever customer is on file for that property. That reminder can cover a single property or sit against many properties an engineer manages for the same customer.
What Checker is not is a property management system. It does not give you, as a landlord or letting agent, one login showing every property you hold regardless of which engineer serviced each one, and it is not built to sit alongside rent collection, tenancy paperwork or maintenance requests. If that is what you need, that is the job of a dedicated property management platform, or, for a smaller portfolio, a well-kept calendar fed by the reminder each of your engineers sends.
What Checker does control is the reliability of the individual certificate: whether it exists, whether it is stored somewhere that will not get lost with a change of engineer, and whether someone gets nudged before the deadline rather than after it. If you are choosing which software your own engineers should use, or asking an existing one what they use today, that reliability is the part worth asking about. See how the certificate itself gets built in Checker’s landlord gas safety certificate walkthrough, and how the wider market for that side of the job compares in the best software for Gas Safe records and certificates and the best EICR software for electricians.
What to ask before you trust a system with your portfolio
Whether the answer is a property management platform, a spreadsheet, or leaning on your engineers’ own reminders, the same questions decide whether it will actually hold up across a portfolio rather than one property.
- Does it hold gas and electrical dates separately, per property, rather than one combined renewal date?
- If an engineer changes, does the record move with the property, or does it stay locked inside that engineer’s own software?
- Does the reminder reach a person who can act on it, with enough lead time to book the work, rather than logging a due date nobody reads?
- Can you produce the actual certificate on request, not just evidence that a reminder was sent?
- Does your management contract with any agent say, in writing, who is responsible for each property?
Frequently asked questions
Does the record retention period match the certificate’s renewal cycle?
No, and this is where portfolios drift. A gas safety record must be kept for 2 years even though the check itself is annual, so you will hold roughly two years of overlapping records at any time. An EICR retention period matches its own inspection cycle: kept until the next one is due in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and for 6 years in Scotland.
Do these deadlines apply to a single rental property, or only to larger portfolios?
They apply per property, regardless of how many you hold. HSE’s guidance defines a landlord as anyone who rents out a property they own under a lease or licence shorter than seven years, which covers a single buy-to-let as much as a large portfolio.
What happens if a management contract with an agent does not say who is responsible?
Responsibility defaults back to you as the property owner. The guidance is explicit that an unclear or silent contract leaves the landlord holding the obligation, not the agent.
Is certificate-producing software the same as portfolio-tracking software?
No. Certificate-producing software is used by the gas or electrical engineer carrying out the check: it records the inspection and generates the CP12 or EICR digitally. Portfolio-tracking software is used by the landlord or letting agent to hold every property’s expiry date in one place, across every engineer they use. An engineer’s software being good at the first job does not make it a substitute for the second.
Authoritative sources
- Gas safety, landlords and letting agents (Health and Safety Executive, HSE)
- Who is a landlord? (Health and Safety Executive, HSE)
- The Electrical Safety Standards in the Private Rented Sector (England) Regulations 2020 (legislation.gov.uk, UK Statutory Instruments)
- Annex D3, Installations for the supply of electricity, Repairing Standard statutory guidance for private landlords (Scottish Government, gov.scot)
- Repairs and maintenance as a private landlord (mygov.scot, Scottish Government public information service)
- Fitness for human habitation, guidance for tenants (contract holders) (Welsh Government, gov.wales)
- Health and safety in rented accommodation (nidirect, Northern Ireland government services)
- The Electrical Safety Standards for Private Tenancies Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2024 (legislation.gov.uk, Northern Ireland Statutory Rules)
- Service Reminders (Checker, checker.app)
Keep every certificate on time, without chasing it yourself
Checker records and files the certificate, and reminds the right customer before the next one is due.