A duplicate tenant receipt has been recorded

SCENARIO

You have recorded a duplicate payment from a tenant, which has resulted in more rent income to the landlord that it should have. To make matters worse, the landlord may now have been paid out this extra erroneous income. 

Hint: To avoid this problem in future, perform a regular bank reconciliation on the client account to spot any duplicate or incorrect bank transactions as soon as possible, preferably before a payout.

SOLUTION

There are two options, depending on whether or not the landlord has been paid out before the error has been spotted.

OPTION 1: If the landlord has not yet been paid out

This is the simplest case, as the problem has been spotted in time.

1. If any of the income from the erroneous transaction has been allocated to pay property charges, remove the payment of those charges.
2. Once the tenant receipt is showing as fully available on the landlord's client balance, you can cleanly remove the incorrect tenant transaction.
3. You may need to manually remove any management fee which was charged in relation to that tenant receipt. It is usually easier to find this before deleting the tenant transaction itself. 

OPTION 2: If the landlord has already been paid 

If the landlord payment was recently, it may be possible to delete the landlord payment within ShowHouse, fix this up in the manner outlined below, and then re-record the landlord payment which actually took place. 

Option 2a (remove transactions and re-enter correctly)

1. Delete the landlord transaction, having noted the actual date, value, etc. when this was made in reality.
2. Now that the funds are back on the landlord's account, this will clear the way to removing the tenant receipt.
3. If any of the income from the erroneous transaction has been allocated to pay property charges, remove the payment of those charges.
4. Once the tenant receipt is showing as fully available on the landlord's client balance, you can cleanly remove the incorrect tenant transaction.
5. You may need to manually remove any management fee which was charged in relation to that tenant receipt. It is usually easier to find this before deleting the tenant transaction itself. 
6. This fixes up the tenant situation, their rent is unpaid again and no payment will show on their statement.
7. In order to allow payout of the actual amount to the landlord, that full amount of funds must be available on their account. Create a property credit for the incorrect overpaid amount (no VAT).
8. Re-enter the landlord transaction for the original (actual) amount on the original date.
9. The landlord has still been overpaid, so the agency must reclaim that overpayment value. Create an expense to the property for the overpayment amount. This will show the landlord owes this money back, and this can be either paid from the landlord, or more likely deducted from the next payout. 

Option 2b (create corrections, leave existing records as they are)

If the error has only been spotted at a much later date, and the removal and re-entry of financial transactions in the manner described above is not possible, or desirable, then you may post correctional values. These corrections will appear on the tenant and landlord statements, but this is unavoidable at this stage. 

1. Create a chargeback to the property, as a property expense (no VAT). This can either be paid directly from the landlord, or more likely deducted from the next payout. 
2. Create an expense to the tenant as they owe the same amount to the agency. 
3. The income from the tenant to the agency will balance the overpayment made from the agency to the landlord.