Properties, Parcels, and Groups
There are three types of portfolio records available in Landscape. Understanding how these are intended to be used is key to capturing your conservation work accurately and efficiently.
Properties
Properties are the most fundamental unit in Landscape. A single property represents a single interest that you or a partner are working on acquiring, have acquired, or acquired and disposed of (this distinction is tracked with 'Property Status'). This interest is commonly a 'Fee Simple' or 'Conservation Easement' interest, but can also be '3rd Party Management', 'MOU', 'Trail Easement', or any other interest. It's no problem if those properties overlap (as is common if you acquire a fee interest over an easement you hold) - Landscape has built-in methods for dealing with those situations.
Properties have special acquisition fields that parcels and groups do not.
Aside from interest, the other vital field in a property is status. Property status tells you the status of the interest, and each status has a very specific meaning:
- Active - You are working on acquiring this interest
- Inactive - You were working on acquiring it at one time, but the acquisition has gone dormant
- Current Holding - You hold this interest. This is the most common property status.
- Partner Holding - You assisted with the protection of the interest, but do not hold any interest yourself.
- Disposed - You held an interest at one time, but then disposed of it through transfer or sale.
Parcels
Parcels are subdivided portions of a property. Parcels are used when easements are subdivided, or when you need to track parcels in different areas for management or counting purposes (like being able to accurate count the acres in each county of a property that straddles two counties). Parcels can not exist without a Property record. You can also put Parcels into a Group if the Group is part of a Property record. This is useful when there are multiple Parcels with the same landowner.
Groups
Groups allow you to group things together for management or viewing purposes. You can group multiple properties together and manage them as one thing, which is how you can represent preserves that are made up of multiple fee acquisitions over time, or you can group parcels with other parcels or properties. You can even group groups (although you probably need a pretty good reason to do so).
Where do 'Stewardship Sites' fit in?
Any one of the record types listed above can be designated as a stewardship site. This allows you to know which records you're actively stewarding and where to enter your work. Records that are designated as stewardship sites should usually not overlap with other stewarded records. In other words, a property that contains multiple parcels should either be stewarded at the property level or at the parcel level (with each parcel marked as a stewardship site).
And what about Projects?
Projects are just ways of organizing groups of tasks and connecting those organized task lists to one or multiple properties. For example, you can use a project to track the due diligence process involved in acquiring a property. Or you could use a project to track your recurring monitoring tasks for all of your easements. Projects also have access to Budget and Funding trackers.
Creating a new parcel or group using Relationships
Once a property is created, you can add a new parcel to it or add it to a group by navigating to the property record and clicking the Relationships button on the left side of the screen. Click on 'Add Relationship', then follow the prompts to create the record. Once the new record is created or added, you can use the relationships button to navigate to and from that record.
What it means for your work when portfolio records are related
Work entered in a record will appear in all parent and component records. For example, a site visit entered at the parcel level will always appear in the parent property as well. An issue entered at the group level will appear in all component property records. Importantly, work will not appear in sibling records. A site visit entered in a subdivided parcel will not appear in any other parcels on that property.
Some Examples
So let's examine how these simple ideas allow you to capture all kinds of records.
One conservation easement that you hold
= One property (Interest = Conservation Easement, Status = Current Holding) designated as a stewardship site.
Multiple fee acquisitions that you hold that make up a single preserve
= Multiple properties (Interest = Fee Simple, Status = Current Holding) connected to one group, which is designated as a stewardship site.
A single conservation easement that you hold with multiple subdivisions and landowners
= One property (Interest = Conservation Easement, Status = Current Holding) with multiple parcels, each designated as a stewardship site.
A phased easement with 3 phases, where each phase absorbs and supersedes the previous phase.
Let's get a little more complicated.
= 3 properties connected to one group. The first two property statuses are 'disposed'. The final phase is set to 'current holding' and is designated as the stewardship site. The group exists to allow you to see all of the details of all of the phases. If the prior phases were NOT replaced by the successive phases, then you could simply keep them as 'Current Holdings'.
A fee simple acquisition that you already held as a conservation easement. The conservation easement is transferred to another organization.
= 2 properties connected to one group. The conservation easement is given a status of 'disposed'. The fee simple property is marked as the stewardship site or the group is marked as the stewardship site. You could add an 'encumbrance' work record to the fee property to indicate that there is a third party holding on the site.
A fee simple acquisition that you place a conservation easement on before selling the fee interest (buy-protect-sell).
= 2 properties connected to one group. The fee simple property is given a status of 'disposed' after it is sold. The conservation easement property is marked as the stewardship site. The group is used for seeing summary data from both records, and for understanding their relationship.
To count or not to count
Many of these complex scenarios involve overlapping interests. Since we want you to be able to calculate and report your total holdings in number and size accurately (ie. not count those overlapping fee/easements twice) we give you the ability track different count metrics using the Advanced Counting features.
While these situations may appear complicated to represent, it's easy to get on the right track by remembering the rule that one property = one interest. And if you need advice, please feel free to reach out to Landscape support!
Changing Record Type
You can change the record type by clicking on the record icon from with the record itself. Be aware that this could cause some fields to be hidden, such as acquisition details (if changing from a property to something else) or counting details. The record will not lose these attributes, they will just be invisible and uneditable until the record is changed back and they are removed. This could result in errors in counting and other metrics.