Property Management

[Regina]

I am creating a property management co. and I can not figure out how to recieve $$ from the owner of the house, whom we charge a % when he is set up as a vender because we pay him $$ we recieve from the customer (Tenant). Do I have my Owner/Tenant set up right? How do I do this?

[louisstone]

Well.. what I'd do is probably a little unconventional, but it may work for you.

Don't set up your client as a vendor. Set them up as a customer. Set up the individual rental units as jobs underneath that customer. I presume that you'll be sending out monthly statements to those renters (or at least generating them internally). However you do it, as long as those rent checks get applied at the 'job' level, it's all good.

Now, on the expense side, you've gotten an electric bill for your client. Enter it as a bill and reference the customer and make sure that you've selected the billable icon. The next time you 'invoice' your customer, the system will ask you if you want to bill those items.

So, go ahead and create an invoice for the expenses (plus your management fee).

Now, create a credit memo for the total amount of rents received this month. When you save, the system will ask you if you want to apply against open invoices (of course you do). Then you also have the option to write a refund check for the remaining balance on the credit memo.

So there you go. Write the refund check and include a copy of the invoice and credit memo for your client's records.

Oh, one more thing. Since you're receiving rents for your client, you should probably post the funds to a liability account. The expenses should be put into something where they can go in and out and have no effect (some misc. account you'll set up).

Hope that helps!
-Lou