Tenant Held

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The Tenant Held amount is money received from the tenant which has not been allocated to rent, debt, letting fee or bond.  It may be being retained or accumulated to pay future obligations or waiting to be returned to the tenant.  As will be seen the facility has a wide ranging influence in the manner tenant receipts are handled.  It is much more than just a place to put a tenant's money while you think about what to do with it, although it can be used for that use as well.

The Tenant Held control account carries the money being held for all tenants while individual tenant amounts are present on many reports.  There is a Tenants menu > Reports > Tenant Held report which tracks movement into and out of the held amount for each tenant.

The Tenant Held:-

will act as a repository of any money received in advance which you do not wish to pass on to the landlord immediately
Examples would be an extra $5 or $10 being paid each week towards the next water bill or building up a rent credit so the tenant does not need to pay rent for a couple of weeks at Christmas.

is integrated with the bond system and will prevent receiving bond in excess of the required amount

will receive any allocation of letting fee in excess of the required amount

will prevent accidentally overpaying the landlord when a tenant has a vacate date entered, assuming the system is used as intended

can be transferred to other uses by entering a receipt with a minus value held amount, then a second receipt allocating the money as you wish.
  4These two receipts must have the same total value as they will need to be presented together on the next bank reconciliation. 

can never be overdrawn (a negative amount).

While a tenant does not have a vacate date a receipt may pay rent, or debt beyond that which is required.  Under those circumstances if, when the tenant's vacate date is entered, the tenant has overpaid rent or debt this will need to be recovered from the landlord, which may be no easy task.

Where letting fee and bond are concerned it is much more clear cut.  The system will not allow more letting fee or bond to be paid than the system records as being due to be paid.  Any excess allocation is transferred directly to Held.

Once a vacate date has been entered the system stops any overpayment of rent, debt or letting fee while over-allocation of letting fee and bond automatically transfers any excess to Held.  This may best be illustrated by this example:-

The tenant owes $100 each of rent, debt, letting fee or bond, a total of $400.

You receive $200 from the tenant.

If you allocated the $200 to any one of rent, debt, letting fee or bond:-
  4 that due amount will be cleared to zero
  4 the other 3 amounts will remain owing $100 
  4 the held amount will increase by $100
  4 it is up to you to transfer the money from Held to wherever.

Where the tenant has already overpaid rent or debt at the vacate date entered:-

The system will automatically reverse the overpaid amounts from the landlord account and place the combined amount into Tenant Held.

If the landlord account has insufficient funds to cover the reversal
  4 a warning message is issued 
  4 but the reversal stands 
  4 and the landlord account will be overdrawn.

Any overdrawn amount will need to be recovered from
  4 incoming rents from other tenants
  4 or you will need to recover the overpayment from the landlord
  4 and where that is not possible by a payment from your trading account receipted into the landlord account.