Track occupancy with stays or away periods

Occupancy starts with one choice on the property's Visits tab: Usually unoccupied or Usually occupied. NestWatch treats every saved date range as an exception to that usual pattern. The Occupancy card then shows the actual status right now, the usual pattern, and the next known change.

Choose the pattern that matches the home

• Usually unoccupied: use this for a seasonal or vacant home. Click Add stay and enter Arrival and Departure.
• Usually occupied: use this for a primary home that is empty only during trips. Click Add away period and enter Departure and Return.

Add or edit one period

1. Open the property and go to the Visits tab.
2. In Occupancy, click Add stay or Add away period. The button follows the home's usual pattern.
3. Enter the two boundaries and, if useful, a short label such as Winter stay or Summer trip.
4. Save. To correct a range later, use its Edit button; to discard it, use Delete.

Set operational task preferences

• Task when home becomes unoccupied creates a coverage follow-up at a real transition to unoccupied.
• Preparation task before home becomes occupied creates a pre-return or pre-arrival task.
• Create it this many days before controls the lead time for that preparation task, including 0 for the transition day.

These are property-level preferences outside the add/edit form, so every period follows the same operational policy. Touching or back-to-back exception ranges do not create a false transition when the derived status never changes.

Scheduling, skipped visits, and billing

• The Schedule and visit forms use the derived actual status. Scheduling on an occupied date shows a warning but is still allowed.
• Turn on Pause visits while occupied at the property level or override it on a recurring schedule. A projected routine visit on an occupied date is skipped and marked Skipped — occupied on the Schedule.
• Skipped occurrences do not count as visit coverage. When an unoccupied home has no upcoming visit in the lookahead window, NestWatch shows No visit scheduled.
• Recurring billing can also pause while occupied. Skipped billing dates remain visible on the property's Billing tab so you can audit what was not generated.

Filter and plan across the portfolio

• On Properties, filter by actual Occupied or Unoccupied status, choose an occupancy date, combine occupancy with other filters, and save the result as a view.
• Sort by Soonest occupancy change to put the next known transitions first.
• The dashboard coverage alert links to unoccupied homes with no visit scheduled. Seasonal outlook counts homes becoming occupied or unoccupied over the next 30, 60, and 90 days, regardless of which usual pattern produced the change.

Change the usual pattern safely

Changing Usually unoccupied to Usually occupied (or the reverse) changes what every exception range means. NestWatch therefore refuses the change while a current or future period remains.

1. Review the current and future dates listed in the Occupancy card.
2. Edit dates you need to preserve elsewhere, then remove those periods.
3. Choose the new usual pattern.
4. Add the correct stays or away periods under the new pattern.

Troubleshooting

• Status looks wrong on the boundary: remember that Departure or Return is the first day after the exception, not its last day.
• Pattern will not change: remove or review every current and future period, then try again. Past periods may remain.
• No preparation task appeared: confirm Preparation task before home becomes occupied is on, check the lead days, and verify there is a future transition to occupied.
• A visit was not skipped: confirm the date is actually occupied and that Pause visits while occupied is enabled on that recurring schedule or inherited from the property.
• A billing date was skipped unexpectedly: check the derived status on that date and the recurring invoice's pause-while-occupied setting; the skipped-date list provides the audit trail.