Arthur,
Yes. You can do this, but you'll need to decide based on your situation
the best workflow.
What you are describing is Accounts Receivable (AR). The Rent is due at
a certain date and thus owing to you. Ideally, you want to 'book' the
rent payment as due in the AR account as of that due date.
Here is what that transaction would look like:
dr. Accounts Receivable
cr. Income/Revenue:Rent (not sure how you've named this account)
The amount for each 'split' or each 'side' of the transaction should be
equal. Money is thus 'flowing' from your Income/Revenue account, 'to'
AR. (an asset account)
When you receive payments, you would decrease AR and increase the
respective asset account. (Cash/Bank, etc.) thus:
dr. Cash/Bank
cr. Accounts Receivable
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Now, this is just a general overview. And in this simple case, you
aren't separately tracking individual tenants.
In order to do so, you have to make a choice as to how in GnuCash you
are going to accomplish this. Each method has its benefits and drawbacks.
1. Manually for everything.
2. Using Scheduled Transactions (with careful attention to auto-firing
and previewing/editing before they are posted)
3. Using the Business Features
Which one you choose will more than likely be dictated by how many
tenants (and properties) you have.
If it is more than 5-10, maybe even more than just 5, I'd skip #1.
#2 can be set up easily enough, but better to use this for a small # of
tenants. Maybe less than 20. (and that may be too much) The reason here
is that you'd need a separate sub-account of AR for each tenant, create
the SX to apply to those subaccounts, and track payments somewhat
manually. (though you can craft reports to help)
#3 is probably the way to go, but you don't get 'automatic' postings.
You *can* however, import 'invoices' for 'rent due' an a regular basis
for all tenants at once. If you have just a handful of tenants, you can
manually use the 'Duplicate' function to repeat previous 'rent invoices'.
In this scenario, 'Tenants' are 'Customers'.
Using the Business Features this way, will allow you to print 'Customer
Reports' which are the same as 'Account Statements' *and* those reports
can show which payments applied to which period's rent.
Read over the Help & Tutorial documents concerning setting up your
Customers and Invoices.
If you run into any snags or have questions, chime back in and we'll try
to speed you on your way.
----
*IMPORTANT - avoid making manual or SX entried to the system-provided AR
account. Leave that alone for the Business Features to deal with. If you
need to make manual entries, create another account called AR-Other or
similar and make it of 'type' Asset *NOT* of type A/Receivable. (there
can be only one of the A/Receivable type accounts) Then if you are
manually tracking tenants, create additional 'asset' type accounts as
children of AR-Other.
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As for over/pre-payments, when you Process Payment from a Customer, you
get the option to apply it to an invoice, or not. If not, it is
considered a pre-payment and can be applied later. (by using the same
Process Payment window again, but this time, simply linking the existing
pre-payment to the new invoice)
If an over-payment, the remainder will be available to apply to a future
invoice in the same way.
Regards,
Adrien
On 3/4/22 5:44 PM, arthur brogard via gnucash-user wrote:
No. Sorry. Didn't put the question right. I mean automatic post to the account
showing what's owing so that I can see (and print out) at any time (on week by
week steps) the balance of the account at that date.
Because in fact they're frequently in the red.
And frequently in front, ironically, because they never match payments up with
owings. So when they come from behind they may finish up with balance of an
amount like maybe $27.50 , not enough for a week's rent but nevertheless by
law I must consider it rental money.
I guess if we credit their account with the monies they pay in then I'd be
talking about an automatic debit of the rent amount each week.
Would that be right? Save me the trouble of entering it on the due date every
week.
Or am I going about it all wrong?
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