Last updated: 2026-05-21

The pending-approval queue

When a tenant emails Anchorlet with a maintenance problem, the issue isn't dispatched to a contractor automatically — it lands here for your review first. You read it, edit anything that needs editing, pick a contractor if one fits, and approve. Only then does any email go out.

The queue exists so no money is spent on the wrong job. A tenant's "the boiler's broken" sometimes means a pressure top-up, sometimes a full replacement; you decide which, and to whom, before Anchorlet sends anything.

What lands here

Anchorlet creates a pending-approval issue when a tenant emails maintenance@anchorlet.ie from their on-file address and Anchorlet can match them to exactly one property in your workspace. The issue lands with status Pending PM approval, with the tenant's words verbatim as the description, any photos they attached, and the system's best guess at title and priority.

Tenants who can't be matched (unknown sender, or one person renting more than one of your properties) go to a separate unmatched queue rather than this one. Issues you create yourself from inside the app skip approval entirely — see Creating an issue for that path.

The list

/issues/pending-approval shows each waiting issue as a card — title, property, tenant name (e.g. Aoife Brennan at Apartment 4, Burlington Road), when it was reported, an Awaiting badge, and a two-line excerpt of what the tenant wrote. Click a card to open the review screen.

Reviewing

Everything's editable. Fix the title if the tenant's was vague, expand the description with anything you know from a recent call, change the priority if it's worse than they think. Pick a contractor from the dropdown — your workspace's contractors, with avoid-marked ones hidden, ordered by name (you pick the trade fit yourself). Add an internal note if there's context the tenant shouldn't see.

Below the form is a photo gallery (one signed link per attached image, valid for an hour) and the conversation thread so far. Both auto-populate as the tenant replies. Save stores your edits without changing status — useful when you want to walk away half-done.

Approving

Once you've picked a contractor, click Approve and dispatch. There's an optional one-liner for the expected window (e.g. "Thursday morning") that gets included in the tenant's confirmation. On approve, Anchorlet does several things in sequence:

Flips the issue's status to Assigned so it leaves this queue and joins the normal issues list.
Sends the contractor a dispatch email (same shape as the regular Dispatching a contractor flow — with photos, with a reply-threading address).
Sends the tenant a Stage-2 confirmation: who's coming, when, what trade.
Records the outbound on the issue thread.

From here the issue is just a normal issue — track it, close it via Closing an issue.

Rejecting (asking for more info)

If the tenant's report is too vague to act on — "the wall is wet" with no photo, no room name — click Reject and ask for clarification. The default message ("Could you tell us a bit more about what's happening? A photo really helps us send the right tradesperson.") is editable. The tenant gets it as a normal email reply, threaded to the same issue.

Important: the issue stays at Pending PM approval. When the tenant replies with the extra detail, the new message appears on the same row and you can approve from there. This is the "need more info" path, not the "this isn't real" one.

Not an issue

For spam, duplicates, or tenant messages that turn out to be nothing — click Not an issue. The issue is soft-deleted, no email goes to the tenant, the row drops off the queue. It's recoverable from /settings/recently-deleted if you change your mind.

Sending a quick reply without acting

The thread composer lets you reply to the tenant without approving or rejecting. Status stays where it is. Useful for "got your message, will get back to you tomorrow" or any back-and-forth that doesn't change what you're going to do.

Things to know

Anyone in the workspace can review — the queue isn't landlord-only. Both you and your invited PM see the same items.
Multi-property tenants don't appear here today. If one tenant rents two properties from you and emails in, the message goes to an unmatched queue for manual routing rather than this approval queue.
The approval step creates an issue_contractors row — exactly the same way assigning a contractor manually does. After approval, the contractor is "assigned" in the normal sense; see Assigning work to contractors for what that means downstream.