Deposits

A deposit is money held against a lease — security against damage or unpaid rent.

It is held, not earned

A deposit is not income. It belongs to the tenant until something gives you the right to keep part of it.

So what is held is tracked separately, on the lease’s Deposit tab, and it never flows to the owner as a payout. What the tenant is asked for and pays runs through their statement, like everything else they owe: each deposit request is a line in the balance, marked DEPOSIT, and each payment shows the full amount that arrived. The part of a payment that settles a deposit request is then transferred to the deposit.

A deposit is not a month’s rent in advance. A tenant who says “use my deposit for the last month” is asking you to do something the lease almost certainly does not allow, and doing it leaves nothing to settle damage against.

Collected before the lease starts

Deposits are normally taken while the lease is still a draft — you stage the lease, collect the deposit, then activate. That is why leases lets you prepare a draft on a unit that is still occupied.

Asking for the deposit

On the lease’s Deposit tab, Add request sets up what the tenant must pay:

• Once: one amount on a date.
• Recurring: the same amount every month, for a number of months.
• Scheduled: a total split into monthly instalments, numbered “Deposit — 1 of 3”. The first instalment carries any odd cents.
• Calculated: worked out from the rent when you save it, for example [Rent] × 2. A later rent change does not alter a deposit already asked for.

Every request is written to the deposit history straight away, dated in the month it falls due. A request only counts as owed once its date arrives. Editing a request rule changes the requests still to come; those already due stay as they were.

Paying the deposit from a payment

Money received pays the deposit first. When you Record Payment and the tenant still owes deposit on that date, or for a month you have already invoiced (October’s deposit, paid in late September after the October statement went out), that much of the payment is transferred to the deposit automatically and the rest pays the rent. The form tells you the split before you save; you do not choose it. The statement shows the payment in full, beside the deposit request it settled.

The two parts stay together: deleting the payment removes its deposit part, and changing its amount or date works the split out again. Bank statement imports split each line the same way, earlier lines first, and show it in a To deposit column.

If the tenant is already in credit when you ask for a deposit, nothing is transferred until their next payment. Their balance is right either way; only the date the deposit records the money differs.

Keeping the deposit off the tenant’s statements

Each lease’s Deposit tab has Show the deposit on the tenant’s statements, ticked by default. Untick it when the tenant should not see what deposit is held - the owner holds it, say.

Unticked, the tenant still sees each deposit request as a line on their statement - it is money they owe - but there is no Deposit section: they never see the deposit held, transfers, refunds or interest. Your own Deposit and Statement tabs still show everything, and say that it is hidden from the tenant.

A statement already sent stays exactly as it was sent: changing the tick affects only statements sent afterwards. The move-out deposit settlement always shows the deposit.

Settlement at the end

When a lease ends, the deposit is settled as an itemised calculation:

Deposit held, less arrears (pulled from the account automatically), less deductions you enter — damage, cleaning, a final utility bill — equals what is refunded.

The result is a formal deposit-settlement document for the tenant, produced alongside the final move-out statement.

Itemise the deductions. A deposit dispute is the most common thing a tenant escalates, and an itemised settlement with the arrears drawn from the actual account is the document that ends the argument.

Interest on a deposit

South African law generally requires a deposit to be held in an interest-bearing account, with the interest belonging to the tenant.

Domi Vera records the deposit and settles it; it does not calculate the bank interest your trust account earned on it. Add that at settlement as part of the amount refunded.

Do not confuse this with late-payment interest, which is charged to a tenant on overdue rent. They are unrelated, and only one of them is calculated for you.

Utility deposits

A deposit specifically against a municipal or body-corporate utility account is currently recorded as an ordinary deposit against the lease. There is no separate utility-deposit type; if you hold one, note what it is for in the lease so it is not settled by mistake.