[GNC] GnuCash for a Letting Agency (holding client money)
David Cousens
davidcousens at bigpond.com
Sat Feb 23 03:16:24 EST 2019
Oli,
For the situation where you have to bill a tenant you may want to look at
the invoicing features of the business features
https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v3/C/gnucash-help/chapter_busnss.html. Using
these features is described in the tutorial guide here
https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v3/C/gnucash-guide/chapter_bus_features.html.
These is also information in the wiki here
https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Business_Features_Issues.
These allows you to issue an invoice to the tenant and then record the
payment against the invoice when the tenant pays the rent and outstanding
charges. The invoice raises an entry against an Account Receivable account.
The Business->Customer->New Invoice will create the following transaction
(acccount names are indicative only) which records that the tenant owes you
money and that you will receive that amount in income. You will be prompted
to create a customer record during this process if the customer is anew
customer
Tot Invoice
Tot Payment
Asset:Accounts Receivable 80
records the tenant owes you 80
Income:Tenant Services 80
records you have earned 80
lets assume as you indicated that the tenant then pays this with his next
rent payment using the amounts you indicated earlier You can use the
Business->Customer->Process payment and select the customer you created
above. This will display any outstanding invoices for that customer and you
would select the above invoice to pay. In this dialog you will select the
transfer account, i.e. the account that the money has been paid into by the
tenant, i.e. Asset:Bank:Cheque. This will display the amount owing for the
invoice by default but you can replace that with the total payment and will
open the register for the Accounts Receivable account. The first two entries
should be created by default. You can create the next two lines by using the
tab key skip through fields to open a new line and then select the libility
account and enter the amount you will owe to the owner. Again use the tab
key to skip fields to open the next line
and select the income account for the amount you receive from the payment as
fees.
Tot Invoice Tot
Payment
Asset:Bank:Cheque 1080
records the tenant has paid you 1080
Asset:Accounts Receivable 80
records that the tenant has paid 80
Liability: Rent Collected 900
records that the tenant has paid 900 which belongs to the owner
Income:Rental Fees 100
records the fess you are paid for collecting rent
At some point you will pay the owner the collected rent. You would record
this as follows:
Deposit
Withdrawal
Asset:Bank:Cheque 900
you paid money to the owner out of your bank account
Liability:Rent Collected 900
and reduced your liabilty to the owner.
Similarly you can treat the owners as customers also when you provide them
with services and invoice them for those services in the same manner as
above. If they don't pay these invoices directly but you pay them from the
collected rent you could make the payments by reducing the Liability: Rent
Collected by a deposit of the amount of the service and making the payment
to the Asset:Accounts Receivable by slecting the accounts as follows in the
Business->Customer->Process Payment dialog.
Decrease
Increase
Liability: Rent Collected xxx
Asset:Accounts Receivable xxx
A CPA is a Charted Practising Accountant or a Certified Practising
Accountant, i.e. an accounting professional who will have knowledge of
accounting practice and business legislation in the legal jurisdiction in
which you carry out your business and can advise you on what records you
need to keep, account heirarchies which are appropriate, any reporting
requirements etc. If you can find a good one they are worth their weight in
gold.
If you are setting up a business you really need good legal and accounting
advice if you are not familiar with the requirements. Any advice you may get
here is generic and illustrative only and about how to use GnuCash not how
to do accounting or how to meet any legal requirements in running a
business. It may or may not be exactly relevant to your situation and
jurisdiction.
David Cousens
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David Cousens
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