Write Off Tenant's Balances

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This menu entry is used to clear a tenant's account.
  • When a tenant vacates there is often residual amounts of rent, debt, letting fee or bond, any or all of which, as far as the system goes, is still to be paid.  Because these amount only represent a "requirement to pay" and are not "real money" that has been received into your bank account it can be "written off" as never going to be collected from the tenant.
  • Money retained in the Tenant Held account can not be written off.  It can be transferred to unpaid rent, debt, letting fee or bond with any excess remaining as Tenant Held or treated as covered in the next section.
  • If unpaid balances remain, their handling becomes a management decision.  Is the balance ever going to be collected and if so when and how?  It may just be a rounding type balance that can not be paid or the amount is not worth chasing.  If the tenant has overpaid can you recover the money from the landlord and return it to the tenant?  Do you have the ex-tenant's forwarding address?
  • If the balance owing will eventually be paid you need do nothing as the account will clear itself.
  • You should clear an account as soon as practical after the tenant has departed as it has a direct bearing on how soon the tenant account can be purged from the system.  See Purge
  • To write off any unpaid balance(s):-
      4 click [Add] and select Write Off Tenant's Balances
      4 tick the boxes for the Rent, Debt or Letting Fee item(s) you wish to write off
      4 you can not write off part amounts
    Well you can (sometimes) by entering a transation (receipt or whatever) for the value you don't want to write off, then do the Write Off, then delete the transaction entered.  This will put the Write Off record in the current period.
      4 click [OK] and a WriteOff record will be created in the last period in which any transaction exists or the period of the first B/Fwd record where only B/Fwd balances exist.
      4 This record can not be edited.  It may be deleted or additional record(s) added.