How rent schedules work

When you add a tenancy you will need to provide some key information such as the start date, rental period and overall tenancy duration. This data is used by the system to automatically apply rent each time it is due, and the rent balance will be updated immediately to reflect the rent due by the tenant (tenancy) to the agency. 

Creating a rent schedule

Usually you will want the system to automatically apply rent regularly on a schedule, e.g. £1000 each month for the duration of the tenancy. Alternatively, you can apply rent manually (non-recurring) if required, e.g. for a partial period at the start of a tenancy if a tenancy starts mid-month but you wish rent to be applied on the first of each month going forward. 

STEP-BY-STEP

1. Click Add Rent from the list rent screen (via the tenancy's Rent and Charges > Rent menu).
2. Specify who is responsible for paying this rent - the tenant or a benefit authority.
3. If rent is to be applied automatically each period (on a recurring basis) then leave the Recurring checkbox ticked. If this is a manual one-off rent charge then untick this box to set it to No. Although rent will be applied, no schedule will be created in this case since it is a one-off charge.
4. Specify the Start Date on this rent schedule should begin to apply rent. This is generally the tenancy start date, but may be different if this schedule is to effect a change in rent, or if rent is to be applied on a different day of the month than the tenancy actually started. 
5. A schedule start date may be in the past, but must be within the tenancy range, i.e. on or after the tenancy start date. However, rent will only automatically be applied from the system start date onwards; any rent before the system start date will need to be entered as one-off (non-recurring) rent charges. 
6. From the start date, specify how often rent should be applied. The default setting is the tenancy's rental period, but this may be different. For example, if a tenancy is monthly the benefit may be paid every 28 days while the tenant shortfall may be paid monthly. In this case you can set up separate rent schedules for the tenant and benefit elements. 
7. Specify an end date for the tenancy, or leave the default selection which will apply rent until the end of the tenancy. If the tenancy end date is updated or if it becomes periodic this schedule will continue to apply so long as the tenancy is active. Alternatively, you may set a specific end date for schedule to cease applying rent automatically. 
8. Specify the Rent Value to be applied by this schedule each period. 
9. You can provide your own Description, but in most cases you can leave this blank and a description will automatically be created using the period dates, e.g. "01 Jan 2017 to 31 Jan 2017". 
10. Click Save to create the schedule (if recurring) and apply any rent to date (subject to item 4 above). 

Pro-rating rent

If rent is applied for a partial period, e.g. at the start of tenancy in order to align with the normal rent due date, or due to a tenancy ending early, then the system will automatically work out the pro-rated rent amounts for these periods and the rent balance will be updated accordingly. 

Similarly, when adding a manual rent record you can specify what period this rent is for, and if the rent is not for a full period then the system will help you calculate the appropriate pro-rated rent value for the specified date range. 

Read more about how rent is pro-rated for partial periods.