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 it is tracked separately from the rent account. It does not reduce what the tenant owes, it does not appear as a payment against an invoice, and it does not flow to the owner as a payout.

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.

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.