Statements

A statement is an account over time: everything charged, everything paid, and what is left.

Statement or invoice?

The question people actually ask is “which one do I send?”, and the answer follows from what each is for.

	Invoice	Statement
Covers	one period	a span of time
Says	“this is what you owe for March”	“here is your account”
Contains	charges	invoices, payments, interest, adjustments
Repeatable	no — one per period	yes — reissue any time

An invoice is one entry on a statement. Send an invoice to demand this month’s rent; send a statement to show somebody where they stand.

Tenant statements

A tenant’s statement shows their invoices, their payments, any interest, and the running balance. It is what you send when someone queries what they owe, and what you send when chasing arrears — because it shows the history rather than asserting a number.

On the PDF, each invoice line links to that invoice in the tenant portal — but only when every tenant on the lease has portal access. Without it the line is plain text, so nobody lands on a sign-in page they cannot use; a tenant who wants the invoice asks you for it.

Owner statements

An owner’s statement is a different job: it explains a payout. Rent collected, less expenses and your fee, equals what they are paid.

Owner statements are per unit, because that is where the books live (units). An owner with four units gets four statements, and an owner-level roll-up above them.

Previewing with drafts

Before you send, the Statement tab shows the statement as it will be once your drafts are approved. Draft invoices are folded in and marked Draft, and the provisional interest is worked out as though they were approved — so the balance and the interest you are checking agree with each other.

Untick Include drafts to see exactly what the tenant or owner would receive today. They never see drafts: not in their portal, not on a sent statement. The preview PDF follows the same switch and is stamped as a preview while drafts are in it.

Drafts must be settled before you send

A statement can’t be sent while a draft is dated on or before the end of its period. Sending makes that period history, so a draft left inside it would later arrive as a back-dated charge on a month the recipient has already been billed for.

The Statement tab lists each one. For each, either:

• approve it,
• delete it, or
• move it to the next statement — for an ad-hoc charge or a credit note. It is re-dated to the day after the period ends, and lands on the next statement instead.

A monthly invoice belongs to its month and can’t be moved — approve or delete it. Drafts dated after the period don’t hold it up.

Sending a statement locks the interest

Worth knowing before you send.

Interest stays provisional — recalculating as payments and corrections land — until the statement is issued. Issuing it is what makes that figure final.

A statement sent ahead of its month — November’s, sent on 25 October — makes interest final only up to the end of the month you send it in. November’s interest stays provisional until the statement you send in November.

Check the interest before you send, not after. Once the statement is out, that period’s interest is locked and can only be changed by a further adjustment that shows on the account as its own line. See interest.

A statement is a snapshot

Each issued statement is kept as it was issued. Reissuing later produces a new document rather than altering the old one, so the copy the tenant received in March still matches your copy in September.

Notes on a statement

You can add a note to a statement — a payment reminder, a notice about a rate change, an explanation of an unusual line. Notes can be written once and reused, or written for one statement only, and the text is frozen onto the document when it is issued. See the notes concept for how they are attached and scheduled.