Agreement Failed (or Hangs In Progress)

While building the agreement, you can see progress in the tenancies list on the right. It starts with an orange "in progress" indicator and will change to a green "completed" when ready for download.

The progress indicator may occasionally show a red "failed" notification or hang "in progress".

There are several options to try to resolve this. The issue is often related to an uploaded attachment.

Possible causes of the failed status when creating a tenancy in Tenancy Builder include:

• assured shorthold is still selected after editing or duplicating an older tenancy
• the tenancy start date is set before 1 May 2026
• a PDF attachment is corrupt, password protected, or not flattened

Failed messages

If the agreement fails after editing or duplicating an older tenancy

If you see a failed message after saving and building a tenancy, it may be because you have edited or duplicated an existing tenancy that still has the tenancy type set as assured shorthold. Since the Renters' Rights Act changes in England from 1 May 2026, the tenancy now required is the assured periodic tenancy.

The simplest fix is usually to create a new tenancy rather than duplicating the older one. If you do edit or duplicate it, edit the tenancy and change the Tenancy Type field to assured periodic tenancy, then Save and Build again.

Check the tenancy start date

The agreement can also fail if the tenancy start date is before 1 May 2026. The new assured periodic tenancy agreements are designed for the Renters' Rights Act rules that started on that date, so use the correct start date or a different template for any earlier tenancy.

Remove attachments

Another cause of the failed status is one of the uploaded attachments, and it might be corrupt, password-protected, or for unknown reasons.

Edit the agreement and remove all the attachment files by clicking "remove file" in each box.

Then, go to the last page, select "save and build", and submit. This will build again, but without the attachments.

If this now works, we can have some confidence that one of the uploaded attachments was the cause of the failure.

Next, you could start by adding the attachments one by one. To do this, go to edit, upload one of the files, save and build, and then repeat the process. If it fails on any of the attachments, you know that's the problem, and please replace it with a working attachment.

In progress

Refresh the page

On success, the system should refresh the browser and display a green completed message on the tenancies list. The browser may not have refreshed automatically, so a manual page refresh should be tried first. If you received an email saying the download is ready, that would typically indicate everything worked properly.

All cases (failed or in progress)

Check the status page

Please check our status page, which will be updated if we know of an issue.

Try building a blank agreement

To establish whether something in the record has become corrupt or for some unknown reason, please follow these steps to fix it (this option almost always works). 

1. From the tenancies list, click "add new". If you see a pop-up, click dismiss.
2. Choose options from the first two drop-downs on page 1 (tenancy type and deposit). Select a landlord and letting unit and enter a From date. If Wales, enter an occupation date (any date is OK). Do NOT add a profile, and don't enter anything else anywhere, and go to the next step. These fields are mandatory.
3. Click next, and in the tenant name field, enter "Test" and enter a valid email in the service email field (any email will do for this test).
4. Click next to the last page.
5. Select Save and Build from the dropdown and click Save and Build.
6. When complete, click the green completed to double-check that the PDF opens.
7. You can now try to edit the agreement where you saw the error initially. If that still has a problem, go to next below.
8. Edit the blank agreement you just tested by adding all details; it will work from now on.

If the blank agreement is successfully built, that shows the system is generally working, and there must be an issue with the individual record. Sometimes it can be as simple as a system blip, which can be difficult to trace unless it repeats.

Try in a private window

Another option you might try is to open Tenancy Builder in a "private window "(incognito in Chrome) to ensure the latest version of the Builder is loaded directly rather than from your browser's memory (cache).

Edit the agreement in progress, go to the last page, and save and build.

Note: the above step about private windows (or incognito) is essential because most issues of this type are due to the browser loading from memory (cache) instead of the website after we have updated the Builder.

If that works, you must clear your browser cache to revert to a standard window.

Other reasons

The failure could be caused by a 3rd party service being down in the cloud where the agreement is being built. This happens occasionally and would cause the failure indicator to display or hang 'in progress'. In this case, try the build again in 10 or so minutes. When we know a 3rd party service is down, we update our status page.

If none of the above works, please get in touch with us by submitting a support ticket.