Managing Agent Accounts

One of Property Managers key features is its ability to manage your business and clients property accounts. It allows you to automatically generate various client income and expense reports, over a certain period of time - for example, over a financial year as well as generate income, expense and profit and loss reports for your own business.

Property Manager allows you to setup multiple bank accounts and associate each property with a particular bank account. Transactions are automatically posted to the correct account allowing you to easily generate financial reports by property, bank account or landlord over any time period.

Depreciation

Expense transactions can be entered and classified as either capital expenditure or as an operating expense.

In Property Manager, operating expenses are taken from rental income to give the overall profit of a property.

Capital expenditure is seen as a long term investment in the property and as such not classed as an operating expense that affects the profit or loss of a property.

At the date of publication of this document, the UK government allows an individual to either claim an ongoing 10% depreciation on all rental income to cover depreciation (on previous capital expenditure) or to directly charge the capital expenditure against rental income – subject to the Inland Revenue conditions.

In the event of using the 10% depreciation calculation, we suggest that you simply add an additional expense transaction of 10% of rental income at the end of the financial year.

Alternatively, if you wish to directly claim capital expenditure against the rental income, simply enter the transactions as operating expenses.

We strongly suggest that you seek independent financial advice from qualified accountants to determine which depreciation method is most suitable for your circumstances and what the current rules and allowances are.

The Accounts Menu has the following options:

Record Income

Property Manager allows you to record income through either a worksheet screen, which is designed to make it quick to record your tenants payments.

Alternatively, you may use the Record Income screen, which gives more flexibility in recording the income.

Tenant Payment Schedule Worksheet

Within the worksheet, simply tick the payments that have been received. Property Manager will then automatically update the accounts and the tenants payment schedule to record the

transaction.

If the tenant has made a part payment, simply enter the amount received in the "Amount Paid"

box. The balance will then remain outstanding.

Note that you may edit or delete any of the scheduled payments if required.

When recording the receipt of income, Property Manager will automatically generate and apply commission charges, saving you the effort of manually calculating and applying the charges. The charges are based on the commission charge set against the property within the Landlord details section.

Record Income Screen

Select the property, to which the transaction belongs and then select the tenant (the tenant list will be automatically limited to tenants with an active contract at the property) and the appropriate rental period.

Once selected, the transaction date and amount will be automatically filled in. Modify as required and click on the disk button to save the transaction.

Agency Fee's

On the right hand side of the screen you will see the "Agency Fee" section.

This displays the agreed property commission charge (e.g. 10%) and automatically calculates the fee . Note that you may alter the fee by entering a new value in the "Edit Amount" box. Set this value to "0" if there should not be a charge.

The Expense Type should be set to "Property Management", "Commission Charge" or any other expense type that begins with "Property Management". These charges will then be treated as income to your Property Management business.

If you wish to add Value Added Tax (VAT or GST) to the transaction, tick the VAT box.

Note that you set the agent commission rate in the Property Details > Owner Details screen.

Each property or flat may have a different rate.

Having recorded the income, the tenants payment history will be automatically updated.

Record Expenses

Property Manager allows you to record one off expenses, such as property maintenance costs or alternatively to setup and record recurring expenses, such as weekly cleaning costs.

Non Recurring Expense

Selected the property which is to be charged, from the Property Address filter. Fill in the date, enter the expense amount and any transaction description you wish to record.

Select the appropriate Expense type, e.g. gas maintenance (through classifying expenses you may generate a number of expense reports which give you useful information. For example, how much have I spent on decorating a particular property).

By selecting the supplier, the payment was made to, you will be able to generate supplier

payment history reports. For example, this would allow you to calculate how much has been paid to a maintenance company over the course of a year.

If the expense is a capital purchase, tick the capital purchase box.

Likewise, if the transaction includes VAT, tick the VAT included box.

By default, the expense is charged to the Property however within the Allocation section, you have the opportunity to allocate the expense to the tenant (in which case it will appear in the tenants payment schedule) or both tenant and property if you wish to reconcile the expense against the income.

Recurring Expense

Select the property which is to be charged, from the Property Address filter. Fill in the date pattern, enter the expense amount and any transaction description you wish to record.

Having selected the property and date, enter the expense amount and any transaction description you wish to record.

View / Modify Transaction Table

This screen allows you to review, sort, modify or delete transaction details in a spreadsheet type format.

Edit the transaction detail as required. The changes are automatically saved.

To delete a transaction, click on the box to the left of the transaction to highlight the row, then click the delete key on your keyboard. Property Manager will ask for confirmation that you wish to delete the transaction. Confirm to delete the transaction.

Accounting Reports

The Financial reports are broken into a number of categories:

Income Reports – allow you to generate various reports based on rental income, for example income by month or income by property.

Expense Reports – allow you to generate various reports based on expenses incurred in the running of the properties, for example expenses by month, by property or by expense type.

Profitability Reports – allow you to view reports based on income less expense, by month or by property.

Landlord Reports - allow you to generate landlord income, expense and statement reports.

Capital Transaction Reports – allow you to generate investment reports by month, by property or by expense type.

VAT Reports – allow you to generate Value Added Tax reports on both expenditure and income.

Bank Reconciliation Report - allows you to reconcile Property Manager transactions with your bank statement, keeping a record of all unreconciled transactions.

In addition to the various reports, a report filter is provided that allows you to limit the reports to a property, time period (e.g. financial year) or tenant.

See example reports below: