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Send lease disclosures to every rental applicant

Each rental application sends the required disclosures and lease document to the applicant for signature.

When this happens

New form submission on your rental application form

Do this

Send a DocuSign lease or application-disclosure envelope to the applicant

One-directional. A submission triggers the action — nothing is written back into your form.

Letting agents and small landlords carry the same admin. Every applicant has to receive a fixed set of disclosures, and the file has to show they received them. Done by hand, roughly one applicant in ten gets the wrong pack or gets it late.

The application form triggers the pack instead. Legal name, the unit applied for and the requested move-in date go into the DocuSign template, the envelope goes out as the application arrives, and the audit trail is DocuSign's rather than a memory of an email. Local disclosure rules are yours to check — the flow sends whatever the template holds.

Setting it up

  1. 1

    Publish the rental application form and set Property Address You're Applying For as a select list of the units you actually manage, so each envelope can be matched to a property.

  2. 2

    In DocuSign, build a template holding your disclosure documents, and the lease itself if you send it at application stage, with the applicant as signer.

  3. 3

    Add text tabs for the applicant's legal name, the property address and the move-in date, and put an initial tab on each disclosure page.

  4. 4

    In Zapier, use formformform's New Submission trigger and select the rental application form.

  5. 5

    Add the DocuSign action that sends an envelope from that template, mapping Email Address to the recipient and Full Legal Name to the signer name.

  6. 6

    Map Property Address You're Applying For and Desired Move-In Date into their tabs, so a returning applicant can see which unit each envelope covers.

  7. 7

    If you manage units across more than one jurisdiction, add a Zapier path per property group so the correct disclosure template is chosen automatically.

  8. 8

    Submit a test application against a real unit, read every page of the resulting envelope, then turn the Zap on.

What maps where

Using the Rental Application Form as the starting point. These are its real fields — swap in your own and the mapping works the same way.

Form fieldDocuSign
Full Legal NameSigner name on the lease and disclosure envelope
Email AddressRecipient email for the envelope
Property Address You're Applying ForProperty address tab across the disclosure pack
Desired Move-In DateCommencement date tab on the lease
Background Check ConsentScreening authorisation tab

Variations worth knowing

Disclosures now, lease later

Split the pack into two DocuSign templates. The application triggers the disclosures immediately; the lease is sent from DocuSign once references clear, so only approved applicants ever sign a tenancy agreement.

Add a co-applicant

Use conditional logic to collect a second applicant's name and email when the household has one, then add them as a second recipient on the same envelope. DocuSign tracks which of the two is still outstanding.

If something isn't arriving

Applicants receive the disclosure pack for the wrong property.

A free-text property field will never match your templates cleanly. Convert Property Address You're Applying For into a select list of managed units, then branch the Zap on those exact option values.

Sensitive answers are sitting in Zapier's task history.

Rental applications carry income and date of birth. Map only what the envelope genuinely needs — a disclosure rarely needs either — and leave the rest in formformform, where responses are encrypted at rest.

Frequently asked questions

Can I send the lease before screening is finished?

You can, though most managers do not. Send the disclosures on application and hold the lease until references and the background check clear, which is exactly what the two-template variation above sets up.

Can applicants supply proof of income through the form?

Yes. Add an upload field and a payslip or a single statement PDF comes in with the application, up to 2 MB per file. A year of statements will not fit, so keep a URL field beside it for a link to their own storage. On an encrypted form the file is encrypted in the applicant's browser and only decrypts in yours, which is where a document that sensitive belongs — it stays on the response and is not carried into the DocuSign envelope. Monthly Gross Income (USD) still captures the stated figure.

How do I prove the applicant received the disclosures?

DocuSign's certificate of completion records when the envelope was sent, opened and signed. That certificate is the audit record, not the form response, and nothing from DocuSign is written back into the application.

Related automations

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