Expenses and disbursements

Rent comes in; not all of it goes to the owner. This page is about the difference.

Where a rand goes

rent collected
  − expenses paid on the owner's behalf
  − your management fee
  − levies, where you pay them
  = the owner's payout

Everything on the left of that sum is recorded against a unit, because that is where the books live. An owner with four units has four of these calculations, and a roll-up across them.

Expenses

An expense is a bill paid to someone else for a property: a plumber, the municipality, the insurer, the body corporate. You capture it under Expenses › Bills against the unit, with the vendor’s invoice attached.

It is not billed to the tenant — unless the tenant is genuinely liable for it, in which case it belongs on their account as a charge or an ad-hoc invoice, not here.

Deciding who bears a cost is the judgement call, and it is yours. Putting a tenant-liable repair through as an owner expense quietly moves money from the owner to the tenant, and neither of them will spot it.

Who paid it

Each bill says who paid it, and that decides what it does to the owner:

• Agency, for the owner — you paid it on the owner’s behalf, so it is deducted on the unit’s next owner statement and reduces that unit’s payout.
• Owner directly — the owner paid it themselves (a debit order, say). It is recorded for the unit’s history, never deducted.
• Agency’s own cost — your office costs. It needs no unit and never reaches an owner.

Expected, Unpaid, Paid

A bill is Unpaid until you mark it paid, with the date and your reference. A bill created by a recurring expense whose amount changes starts as Expected: confirm the amount and it becomes Unpaid. Void takes a bill out of every total.

A bill already on an owner invoice keeps its amount, unit and vendor; you can still record its payment and add documents.

Recurring expenses

Under Expenses › Recurring, set up what comes every month, quarter or year once:

• Fixed — the same amount every time (insurance, a garden service). Tick debit order and each bill is marked paid on its date.
• Variable — rates and taxes, water. Each bill arrives as Expected at last period’s amount, for you to check against the account.

A bill is created on its date. Voiding one keeps it from being created again.

The original documents

Attach the vendor’s invoice, photos and quotes to a bill — PDF, image, Excel or Word, up to 4 MB each. PDFs and images open beside the bill; the rest download.

Vendors

Expenses › Vendors keeps who you pay: contact, VAT number, banking, the reference to use when paying, and the usual category for their bills. Each vendor shows what you have paid them this year.

Your management fee

Your fee is an owner charge — defined per unit, like any other. See charges and templates.

Because it is per unit, an owner’s statement shows what each property cost them to manage, rather than one fee against a portfolio.

Disbursements

A disbursement is the payment you actually make to the owner.

You record it after paying them; Domi Vera does not move the money (getting started). Where the payment covers several units, it is allocated across them so each unit’s books stay right.

Owning entities

Where units are held by different trusts or companies, disbursements follow the entity that owns each unit — separate books, separate payouts. See owning entities.

Levies

Levies paid to a body corporate on an owner’s behalf pass through on the owner statement. Each unit’s levy charges also make the month’s body corporate bill in Expenses by themselves — a record of the payment, never deducted a second time. See levies. Reconciling what the body corporate charged against what you passed on is a separate job — see levies.