Easier tenant receipt process...

This short video (03:09) illustrates the improvements to the process of receiving money from tenants.

• Paying rent or charges depends on which bank account funds are received into.
• Future rent is no longer automatically applied
• Allocating existing tenant credit/overpayments 
• Record benefit receipts in the same form

Paying rent or charges, depends on bank account

Which charges you are able to pay off directly now depends on which type of bank account you receive the tenant money into. By default, the client bank account is shown since this is usually where tenant funds are lodged, and the receipt form shows rent charges which may be settled immediately via the client account. The total of outstanding charges is shown, but these will only be paid off directly if you receive the funds into the office account, or by transferring tenant money later.

Now, rather than letting the system automatically allocate tenant receipts against the oldest outstanding rent first, you can now decide yourself which rent to pay off. Of course, it is still most likely to be the oldest first, so you don't need to change these unless you want to; it's up to you.

Future rent no longer automatically applied

If the tenant pays more than is currently due for rent (or charges) then this overpayment will now be stored as credit on the tenant's account. The system will no longer apply rent for future periods automatically.

Remember though, that money can only be passed to the landlord if it is recorded as rental income, so you may still need to manually apply the next period's rent and then allocate the overpayment to that rent. You can do this via the new rent schedules. 

Allocating existing tenant credit/overpayments 

When receiving money from a tenant, you will see in the section on the top-right if there are any existing credits or overpayments on the tenant's account. If so, you can allocate this credit to rent and/or charges, which may mean you don't need to receive additional money from the tenant at all. 

Record benefit receipts in the same form

If some rent payments are due from the local  authority, these benefit contributions may be paid to the agency, to the tenant, or to the landlord. Payments to the tenant will still be treated simply as tenant contributions, but you can process receipts to the agency or landlord through the same form as normal tenant payments by choosing the appropriate option from the "Paid By" menu. 

The "Paid Direct to Landlord" button has also been replaced by an option "Tenant to Landlord" in the "Paid By" menu, to keep things simple and consistent.  

See the other features and updates in this same release.