Income & Charges

The Payments tab on a tenant's page is where you record payments and add charges. The left side shows the current payment form; the right side shows payment history. Below both is the charge allocation grid showing how the payment is applied.

Charges vs. payments

Charges are amounts the tenant owes - rent, late fees, a repair chargeback. They increase the balance. Payments are amounts received - they reduce the balance. The ledger shows both in date order so you can see exactly how the balance got to where it is.

Recurring charges - how monthly rent works

Monthly rent is not entered as a fixed field - it's set up as a recurring charge. This is the key concept: a recurring charge posts automatically to the ledger on a chosen day each month. You set it up once and it runs indefinitely until you set an end date or the tenant moves out.

To set up monthly rent: go to the tenant's Recurring Charge tab, click Add, enter the amount and the day of month it should post (typically 1). That charge will appear on the ledger every month going forward.

Payment allocation

When you record a payment, it is automatically applied to the oldest unpaid charges first. If a tenant pays $1,000 against a $1,250 balance, the $1,000 goes toward reducing the oldest charge and the remaining $250 stays as an open balance. You don't have to manually assign which charges get paid.

Late fees

Late fees are calculated automatically based on the rules you configure in Settings > Late Fees. The system recalculates whenever you open a tenant's Income tab or the date changes. If an overdue balance is detected past the grace period, the fee is posted directly to the ledger.

Flat fees are posted once per overdue period. Daily fees accumulate each day the balance remains overdue. Both stop accruing once the balance is paid.

Credits

If a tenant pays more than they owe, the excess is stored as a credit on their account. The next time you open the Payments tab you will see the credit balance displayed at the top of the form. Click Apply Credit next to the Amount field to apply it toward the current payment.

NSF (returned check)

When a payment bounces, select the payment in the history list and click the NSF button. You will be asked to confirm the NSF date and whether to add an NSF fee. This reverses the payment: all allocations made against charges are undone and those charges go back to unpaid. Any overpayment credit that was created from that payment is restored and available to use again.

The NSF fee option is pre-checked if you have a default NSF fee amount configured in Settings > Late Fees. A new charge for that amount is posted to the ledger automatically.

Printing income and expense pages

The income and expense pages each have a print button in the toolbar. This prints or saves a clean summary of all ledger rows for the current date range - useful for providing a tenant a receipt history or for your own records.