Rethinking the Mobile Bottom Nav: Why Check-Out Shouldn't Be a Tab

Release: v0.1.147 · Category: UI/UX, Responsive

Mobile navigation is a scarce resource. Five tabs is the hard limit before a bottom bar becomes cluttered, so every slot has to earn its place by reflecting how agents actually spend their day — not just by mapping to a feature that exists.

In v0.1.147 we audited the existing tab set and found a structural mismatch worth fixing.

The Problem with the Current Tabs

The current MobileBottomTabs component exposes:

Dashboard · Tenancies · Check-Out · Deposits · Compliance

At first glance this looks reasonable — it covers the main sections of the product. But look closer at Check-Out.

Check-Out is a workflow, not a destination. An agent runs a check-out when a tenancy ends: they attach evidence, fill in the condition report, and submit. It's a task with a clear start, middle, and end. Once it's done, there's nothing to return to. Most agents trigger it from inside a tenancy record — not by navigating directly to a Check-Out screen.

Yet it occupies one of only five premium slots in the mobile nav, while two genuinely high-frequency destinations — Properties (the portfolio root) and Check-In — are completely absent. To reach either of them on mobile, an agent has to open the slide-over hamburger menu. Every single time.

The Right Mental Model: Frequency vs. Depth

The best mobile nav tabs share two properties:

Agents visit them multiple times per day, not just when a specific workflow is active.
They serve as entry points for further navigation, rather than being terminal workflow screens.

Check-Out fails both tests. Dashboard, Tenancies, Compliance, and Deposits all pass them.

A Stronger Tab Set

Here's the restructured nav we're moving toward:

Tab	Why it belongs here
Dashboard	The daily overview — first stop every morning.
Tenancies	The most-visited section; also the natural gateway to Check-Out and Check-In workflows.
Compliance	Carries the alert badge for urgent compliance items — needs to be visible at a glance.
Deposits / Negotiation	Carries the dual-badge for live disputes and pending deposit decisions.
+ Create	Opens the `QuickCreateDropdown` — a universal shortcut to start any new task without navigating first.

This structure does three things at once:

Preserves both urgency badges (Compliance and Deposits) where agents can see them without tapping anything.
Removes the workflow-specific tab (Check-Out) in favour of a contextual path through Tenancies, which is where agents already are when they start a check-out.
Adds a + Create shortcut that turns the fifth slot from a rarely-used destination into a high-value action available from anywhere in the app.

What Agents Won't Miss

Check-Out isn't going away — it's just moving to where it makes sense. Agents will still access it from inside a tenancy record, exactly as they do today. The only change is that it stops taking up prime real estate in a navigation bar that should reflect daily habits, not infrequent workflows.

Affected Component

src/components/mobile-bottom-tabs.tsx

Part of our ongoing effort to make the platform feel fast and intuitive on mobile — because most agents are on-site, not at a desk.