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T
tanahmed01
November 2, 2022
Question

Letting Agent - how do deal with rents and expenses

  • November 2, 2022
  • 1 reply
  • 0 views

Can I ask this from 2 points of view - as the agent and as the landlord.

 

As an agent, I receive rent from various tenants for the same landlord and carry out maintenance activities on the properties for the same landlord. At the end of the month I would like to produce a consolidated invoice and pay the balance owed to the landlord. What is the best way to do this, where the single payment can then be reconciled with the bank statement? I was thinking about raising an Invoice with expenses added as negative amounts, but if the total (which does happen) is negative then I can't create the invoice.

 

As the landlord using Quickbooks, how do I record the payment - do I raise an invoice for rents expected (to match the amounts shown on statement from letting agent) and then create credit notes for the bills and then apply the payment received to the agents as a customer?

1 reply

G
GeorgiaC
November 2, 2022

Hi tanahmed01, thanks for your post - raising a bill for the rent amount and adding additional lines to subtract the expenses could work for this; in cases where there is a negative overall amount, is this charged to the landlord?

 

As a landlord, you would raise an invoice for each rent (you can create tenants as customers, properties as classes, and categories such as rent payments and late fees as products) and then apply the payment deposited by the agent to this. 

 

 

T
tanahmed01Author
November 3, 2022

From the letting agent point of view - would it be the other way around raising a bill for the expenses and crediting the rent owed? The landlord/property owner being classed as a Supplier and the Tenant the Customer, whom you invoice for the rent?

 

From Landlord point of view - agree, can raise an invoice to the Letting Agent for the rent expected and payment received being the amount paid by the agent - however I think I would have to credit the expenses against the Invoice for the bill due to the agent. Not sure what would happen if the total amount owed for expenses is more than the rent expected. Would that just be a credit against the next invoice to the agent for rent due?

G
GeorgiaC
November 3, 2022

Hi tanahmed01, in cases where the total expenses on the bill don't exceed the rent credit amount, you would be left with a partially-applied supplier credit with the difference as the remaining balance. Additionally, supplier credits don't have a payment account field as they are non-posting transactions, and so there would be no payment recorded by the agent to the landlord. 

 

Generally, we recommend recording expenses (using an expense transaction) individually with the date that these were paid, to reflect and reconcile with the real-life bank account. For the purposes of consolidating onto one form, you could run the 'bills and applied payments' report, filtered by supplier (customise > filter > supplier). For best advice in recording this, I'd recommend speaking to your bookkeeper/accountant. 🙂

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