Tenancies
The system provides a powerful and flexible mechanism for describing
tenancies and, in particular, the charges and income recorded against
them.
Tenancy Record
Each tenancy has a main record which describes the basic attributes
of the tenancy:
| Attribute |
Description |
| Account Number |
Each tenancy is allocated a unique account number when it's
first created. This cannot be changed. |
| Property Unit |
Each tenancy is associated with a rentable property unit.
Property units which are not rentable cannot be used for new
tenancies. |
| Tenant Name(s) |
The name(s) of the tenant(s). |
| Primary Contact Email |
The email id of the primary contact for the tenancy. |
| Telephone Number |
The telephone number of the primary contact for the
tenancy. |
| Mobile Number |
The mobile number of the primary contact for the tenancy. |
| Start Date |
The date on which the tenancy started and, hence, the date
from which rent is due. |
| End Date |
The date on which the tenancy ended and, hence, the date
after which no rent is due. If the end date is absent then the
tenancy is deemed to be open. |
| Minimum Term |
The minimum term (in months) of the tenancy. |
| Maximum Term |
The maximum term (in months) of the tenancy. |
| External Reference |
A reference value that you can optionally record for the tenancy. This field is only
displayed if External Reference fields are enabled within your Business Setup
settings. See the help content for
the organization dialog
for further details.
|
| Furnishing |
The type of furnishing provided with the tenancy. |
Deposit Protection
|
Details of whether or not deposit protection is required and if so,
the date and reference for the deposit protection.
|
Right To Rent
|
Details of Right to Rent checks performed and, where required, the
date up to which the tenant has the right to remain in the country.
|
Guarantor
|
The name and address of the guarantor (if any)
for the tenancy.
|
Planned Tenancy End Date
|
For a tenant who's leaving, the tentative date
on which the tenancy will end.
|
Planned Moving Out Date
|
For a tenant who's leaving, the planned date on
which the tenant will move out.
|
Initial Date Notice To Quit Provided
|
For a tenant who's leaving, the date on which a
notice to quit was initially provided.
|
Date Written Notice Received
|
For a tenant who's leaving, the date on which a
formal written notice to quit was provided.
|
Forwarding Address
|
The forwarding address for a tenant who has
left.
|
Archived
|
Whether or not the tenancy is archived. Archived
tenancies are not displayed on the list of tenancies by
default. They are also not displayed in the Tenancies
panel on the home page. Archiving the tenancy will not delete
any of its information.
|
Attachments
The Attachments link at the top of the dialog displays the file
attachments that are stored against the tenancy record. For further
details see the attachments help topic.
Tenancy Charges
Each tenancy has a number of charges recorded against it. These
charges are used to automatically calculate the payments that are due
and to display details of the individual due payments in the tenancy
balance.
When income is recorded against a tenancy you have to choose the
charge against which to record the transaction, though the system will
attempt to choose a sensible default for you based upon which charge
has payments due.
There are four different types of charge:
| Type of Charge |
Description |
| Deposit Charge |
Deposit charges describe the payments due for the deposit.
Typically, an open tenancy will have a single deposit charge
for the deposit amount due before the tenancy starts. However,
you may want to enter multiple deposit charges if, for example,
you wanted to track deposits due for each individual of a
multi-person tenancy. When a tenancy is ended a negative charge
should be created to describe the fact that a deposit is due
back to the tenant. The tenancy dialog has a button called
Return Deposit which automatically creates the correct negative
charge. |
| Recurring Rent Charges |
A Recurring rent charge is used to describe a regularly
repeating rent charge. Each recurring rent charge has a date
from which it starts, an amount and a frequency which
determines when it repeats. The first recurring rent charge
must start on the same date as the tenancy start date and no
recurring rent charge may start after the end date of a closed
tenancy. For an open tenancy, the last rent recurring rent
charge repeats until the current date.
A recurring rent charge doesn't have to start or end on a
natural boundary of it's frequency. For example, a monthly
charge doesn't have to start on the first day of a month, nor
does it have to end on the last day of a month. The charge will
simply repeat on the same day it started, e.g. for a monthly
charge starting on the 10th April, it will repeat on 10th May,
10th June, 10th July, etc. In addition, a recurring rent charge
does not have to end on the last day of it's repeating period.
So, using the same example of a monthly recurring rent charge
starting on the 10th April, the tenancy could end on the 31st
July in which case the calculation engine will generate
payments due on 10th April, 10th May, 10th June and 10th July,
but for the last payment due it will calculate the precise
amount due based upon the number of days between 10th July and
31st July.
Care should be taken to ensure the recurring rent charges
generate the precise dates rent is actually due. For example,
if a tenancy started on the 10th April and rent is due monthly
on the 1st of each month then there should be two recurring
rent charges created:
- The first recurring rent charge should start on the 10th
April
- The second recurring rent charge should start on the 1st
May
The system will automatically calculate the precise amount
due between 10th April and 30th April based upon a daily rate
derived from the monthly due amount (i.e. monthly amount x 1
÷ 365).
|
| One-off Charges |
Sometimes it's necessary to record the fact that a
one-off payment is due. For example:
- An administration fee at the beginning of a
tenancy.
- A charge for repairs to a property for which
the
tenants are deemed to be responsible.
- An interest charge for a late rent payment.
- Rent due where it's not possible to use
recurring
rent charges.
- Refunds due to the tenants, in which case the
charge
should be recorded with a negative amount.
You can record the same type of one-off charge
multiple times, each
with different dates and different amounts. Simply
make sure they have
unique names.
|
| Additional Recurring Charges |
Describes a repeating charge which is additional
to the
main rent, for example, a service charge or a
cleaning charge. A
tenancy can have any number of additional recurring
charges and they
can run in parallel with each other or with the main
recurring rent
charges. |
Notes:
- The name of the charge must be unique within the
tenancy.
- Both Deposit charges and One-off charges allow
negative
amounts which mean that money is due back to the
tenants.
- Managing rent payable in arrears is only available to
upgraded accounts.
Tenancy Charge Tax Basis
Each tenancy charge has a Tax Basis which determines how
income records recorded against that charge are treated
for taxation
purposes. See the tax
worksheet
help for further details.
Creating a New Tenancy
To create a new tenancy record, click on the Tenancies
link at the top of the page and then use the Record
New Tenancy
link on the left-hand side of the page to register the
appropriate
details.
The dialog for creating a new tenancy contains the basic
attributes as described in the Tenancy
Record
section above. In addition, the following attributes are
shown to make
it easier to create the initial set of charges:
| Attribute |
Description |
| Deposit |
The amount of deposit payable for the tenancy.
This can
be left blank if no deposit is due. |
| Rent |
The amount of rent, the frequency rent is payable
and whether the rent is payable in advance or in
arrears.
For monthly rents specify the day of the month on
which rent is due. For weekly rents specify the day
of the week on
which rent is due. |
| Starting Balance |
This section supports the explicit specification
of the
starting balance, which by default is £0.00 on
the starting date
of the tenancy. Typically, it's only necessary to
specify the starting
balance if you don't wish to record the full history
of the tenancy.
For example, if a tenancy started on 1st January
2006 and has always
been regularly paid, but you only wish to track its
balance from 1st
June 2006 then you should create the tenancy with
the following
attributes:
- Tenancy Start Date of 1/Jan/2006
- Starting Balance of £0.00 on 1/Jun/2006
|
Once a tenancy record has been created then it's possible
to
adjust its charges using the regular Action icons on the
Tenancy
Balance page.
Tenancy Balance
To view the tenancy balance for a tenant, find the tenant
in
the Tenancies section of the home dashboard and click
on the
tenant name. Alternatively, find the tenant in the tree
view of the
Tenancies page and click on the tenant name. The tenancy
balance page
will display two main sections:
- The top of the page contains the Tenancy Details
section
which is a summary of the tenancy along with an overall
tenancy balance.
- The remainder of the page contains the Account Charges
and
Payments section. This consists of a table split into a
separate
sub-section per tenancy charge. Each tenancy charge's
sub-section shows
the amount and date for each payment due and for each of
these, the
matching income records. Each sub-section also has a
summary balance.
The system provides a powerful tenancy balance
calculation engine. It uses the tenancy charges to
determine the
payments due from the tenant (or in the case of negative
charges,
refunds due to the tenant).
Each income record must be associated with a specific
tenancy
charge. For each Deposit and One-off Charges the
calculation engine
simply adds up the amounts of the income records recorded
against the
charge to work out the balance. For a Recurring Rent
Charge the
calculation engine generates the payments due
automatically and then
matches income records against them to calculate the
balance. An
overall balance for the tenancy is calculated by adding up
the balances
for each individual charge.
Tenancy Balance Display Options
The tenancy balance page can be customized in the following ways. These settings are
also honored when creating printable pages or when exporting the balance statement.
Balance Date
By default, the balance is calculated up to the end of the current rent due period, or
to the end of the tenancy if the tenancy end date has passed. You can override this and
ask the system to calculate the balance on a specific date by setting the Balance Date
field at the top of the page. If the override balance date is before the current date,
then the statement will ignore any payments due and payments made after it.
If the override balance date is in the future, then the statement will show all payments
due up to that point and include any payments recorded in the future up to that point.
Full vs Compact Views
By default, the system displays the full details of the tenancy balance, showing all
historical payments due and payments made. The selector at the top of the Account Charges
and Payments section can be used to switch to the Compact View, which will then
display a shorter view of the statement, showing only those payments due or paid for
each charge since the last zero balance entry.
Default Display Options
You can also set various default display options using the Default Display Options
link on the left hand side of the page. These options are saved as defaults for your user
account and will be remembered across logins:
| Option |
Description |
| Hide total paid/due |
Whether or not to display the total paid and total due in the summary. It is sometimes
useful to hide these when producing statements for tenants.
|
| Show latest first |
By default the tenancy balance is displayed in order of payment due date,
from earliest to latest. This option allows you to reverse the order so they are
shown from latest to earliest.
|
| Show compact view |
By default, the tenancy balance is shown with the full view.
Setting this option changes the default display so it is shown in compact view
by default.
|
| Always show actual dates |
A rent income transaction may have an optional reporting date defined for it. If
specified, the reporting date is used as the payment date instead of the transaction
date. This is particularly useful for aligning income transactions more accurately
with payment due entries on the tenancy balance statement.
This option forces the statement to always display the actual transaction date
even when a reporting date is specified. If this is enabled, transactions will be
allocated to payment due entries using the reporting date, but will be displayed
with the actual transaction date.
|
Payments and Charges
It's important to understand the distinction between payments and
charges, in particular when dealing with deposits. For example, consider
a tenancy which has a deposit of £400:
When the tenancy is started, you need to:
- Record a deposit charge which says that £400 is due as
deposit. This is automatically done if a deposit is specified when
initially creating the tenancy. At this point the balance will be
£-400 as a deposit is due but has not yet been paid.
- Record an income transaction which says that £400 was
actually paid. At this point you the balance will be £0.00 as no
amounts are owed between you and the tenant.
When the tenancy is ended you need to:
- Record a negative deposit charge which says that £400 is
due back to the tenant. The Return Deposit link will do this for you. At
this point the balance will be £400 because a deposit is held
even though it is due back to the tenant.
- Record a negative income transaction which says that £400
was actually returned to the tenant. At this point the balance should be
£0.00 as no amounts are owed between you and the tenant.
|
