Comparison
"Why pay for a register when my platform is free?"
Fair question. Free and low-cost platforms — Cloud Rental Manager, DoorLoop's entry tiers, a well-run spreadsheet — are systems of action: rent, screening, maintenance, accounting, marketing. Many are genuinely good at that. What they are not is a system of proof, and the difference only shows when a number gets challenged.
Systems of action vs. a system of proof
An operations platform stores whatever number a person typed in. None of them tie a term to the page it came from, detect that an amendment contradicts it, or recompute the deadline underneath. That is not a criticism — it is not what they are built for. It is simply a different job, and it is the job Provenance does.
| Capability | Provenance | Operations platforms |
|---|---|---|
Source citation per term | Document, page and excerpt stored with every fact | A field holds whatever number a person typed in |
Amendment conflict detection | A later document contradicting a term is surfaced, both readings kept | The new value overwrites the old one, or lives in an unlinked file |
Derived deadline recalculation | Obligations recompute when a governing term moves, with the rule shown | Critical dates are keyed once and stay where they were typed |
Named human verification | A person approves each fact; name and timestamp attach | Data is trusted once entered |
Append-only fact history | Superseded, never overwritten — enforced in the database | Activity logs exist; prior values are rarely queryable as of a past date |
Lender / auditor packet | A PDF a third party can check line by line, citations included | Reports exist; the provenance of each number does not |
Revocable property-scoped guest access | Counsel, brokers, managers — scoped, expiring, revocable | User roles exist; property-scoped external access is uncommon |
Rent collection | Deliberately not built | Core strength — this is what these platforms are for |
Maintenance | Deliberately not built | Core strength — ticketing, vendors, work orders |
Accounting | Deliberately not built | Core strength — GL, AP/AR, owner statements |
Nothing here replaces your operations platform. Keep it.
The question that settles it
When a lender, an auditor, or a buyer asks where a number came from, "it is in the system" is not an answer — the document, the page, and the named person who checked it is. If your leases are simple, never amend, and nobody downstream asks for proof, a free platform is enough and we will say so. If a blown renewal notice or a mis-billed CAM year would genuinely hurt, the register pays for itself the first time it catches one.
Audit one lease free
Send us a single lease with its amendments. We extract it, verify it, and return a findings report: what is wrong, what it is worth, and the page each conclusion came from. If the report finds nothing, you have a clean lease and it cost you one document.