There are times when a landlord collects a rent cheque that represents payment to multiple tenants or units. Common examples may be Commercial tenants who occupy multiple units and pay via a single cheque or a government subsidy cheque that subsidize multiple units. The problem that occurs with these types of payments is how it is recorded in the general ledger and individual tenant sub-ledgers.
 
Before the addition of the Distribute Cheque function, the method of entering a cheque that needed to be split among multiple leases followed a procedure where you needed to deposit the entire cheque to income (in the Deposit screen) and then work your way through each individual tenant to apply the appropriate credit. Everything works out accounting-wise, but the procedure is time consuming and tedious. Furthermore you do not have a list of those who are getting the credits per cheque directly on the system which can be frustrating if you need to file through the GL to find which tenants got the credit from which cheque. We thought that there could be a better way of doing it all and what emerged was the Distribute Cheque screen.
 
This screen allows you to input the whole cheque and break it down among the various tenants so that you get:

1. A record of the cheque with its reference number
2. A record of all the tenants that being credited via this payment (with the cheque reference attached)
3. A unified entry that results in only one payment posted to the Bank GL
4. A simple way of posting the payments into each tenant ledger with minimal time investment

One feature within this screen is the Amount Remaining field. This ensures that the user never over or under credits the tenants because all the credited amounts must equal zero. Once the Amount Remaining field shows zero, you can be confident to post the cheque breakdown without worry of inputting wrong information.
 
An advanced function of this screen allows for some specific instances where a tenant is credited with a larger amount than the cheque payment is made out for. A typical example is where a rental agent collects the first and last month’s payment and submits to the landlord a portion less their commission. This screen will allow this transaction type by posting all the valid transaction details to the proper accounts with only having to fill in this one screen and clicking save.
 
For full details on how to use this screen, please click here or navigate to our Documentation Wiki to see how to perform other functions.