The monthly cycle

The same five steps, in the same order, every month. Once the setup is right this is most of what managing a portfolio in Domi Vera involves.

1. Generate

Generate the month’s invoices from each lease’s charges.

Before you start, enter any variable charge amounts for the period — a municipal water bill, an electricity recovery. An invoice will not issue while one is blank, and a blank is not a zero.

If a lease has metered charges, capture the readings now.

2. Review

Read the drafts. This is the only free moment in the cycle.

Worth checking: pro-rata on any lease that started or ended mid-month; variable amounts against their source documents; anything whose total differs from last month without a reason you know.

3. Approve

Approve each draft. It gets its number, lands on the ledger, and becomes visible to the tenant.

This is irreversible. An issued invoice is never edited — a mistake found afterwards needs a credit note, which is a second document on the account rather than a quiet fix.

Then send them.

4. Record what comes in

As payments arrive, record them — or import the bank file in one pass, which is faster for anything more than a handful.

A payment settles the lease’s balance, not a particular invoice. A tenant who pays part of what is owed keeps accruing interest on the rest.

5. Issue the statements

At month end, issue each tenant statement and each owner statement.

Sending a statement locks that period’s interest. Check it first — see adjust or waive interest. Afterwards it can only be changed by a further adjustment that appears on the account as its own line.

Then pay your owners and record the disbursements.

The two irreversible steps

Approving an invoice, and sending a statement. Everything else can be corrected quietly; those two put a figure in somebody else’s hands.

For what to do at the end of a month in more detail, see month-end close.