Property Books and rent

If a company owns rentals, switch on property tracking and a Properties area appears beside its books: the portfolio, the tenants, the rent, and the paper trail, all riding the same ledger as everything else. No second system. Choosing the rental property chart when you set up the books switches it on for you.

The Registry

One row per property: address, the name your manager's statement uses, class, management fee, manager, occupancy and status. Search by anything, filter by manager or occupancy, and stack attribute filters ("pool, in an HOA, at least 1,200 sf"). Each property's profile carries its parcel number, key dates, valuations, financing, and the recurring obligations you expect to pay (water, trash, HOA, insurance), so a missing bill is noticed, not discovered.

Each property carries a class, so its rent and its costs stand apart on the reports. Leave the class empty on a new property and one with the property's name is made for you when you save (or the class of that name is linked, if it exists). Rent invoices carry it on every line and name the property in their memo; tag a repair bill with it to put the cost on the same property.

The setup for statements from a property manager sits folded at the top of the Registry: open it only if a manager collects the rent and sends you a monthly statement to post.

Leases and tenants

The Rent tab is the working board: every tenancy with its scheduled rent, deposits held, and what needs attention next. A lease holds the schedule (rent, recurring extras), the tenant contact, and its deposit history. Nothing about a lease is mandatory, so a half-known tenancy can be recorded today and completed as you learn more. A new tenant typed into the lease is added to Contacts as a Tenant. A deposit is held in a liability account (the chart's tenant deposit account is chosen for you; Accounts Payable and card accounts are not offered).

Rent, two ways

You collect the rent: the charge engine turns each lease's schedule into that month's invoices, on time, with a permanent record per charge. Auto-invoicing is per tenant's choice; months that need a decision wait in a queue instead of guessing.
A manager collects for you: TaDa Books watches instead of billing. Mark who is behind, record notices, and track each case; the manager's statements reconcile against what the books expect, and the owed management fee (a percent of rent or a flat monthly amount) is checked against what was actually taken. Rent, late fees and prepaid rent count as one rent figure for the month, and the fee is priced on all of it.
You manage it for its owner: if you are the property manager, the property's Managed for an owner card names whose rent it is. See Trust accounting, "Properties you manage for their owners".

When a housing authority pays part of the rent (a voucher or another programme that pays every month), name the programme, the paying agency and the two parts on the lease. Each month is then billed as two invoices: the agency's part to the agency, the tenant's part to the tenant. Each has its own balance and statement, and a late fee is only ever worked out on the tenant's part. A month that is only part occupied shares the proration between the two the same way. One-time help (a charity paying a month) is not split: record it as that payer's payment.

Sales tax on rent

Rent is not taxed the same way everywhere: some states tax rental income and most do not. TaDa Books decides each property's rent tax in three steps, the most specific first:

The property's own choice, on its profile under Sales tax on rent - for a commercial unit in a state that taxes only homes, or the property that is exempt.
Your choice for the property's state, in Company settings > Company info > Sales tax on rent (shown once you collect sales tax in that state).
What we know of the state's law. Where nobody has recorded it yet, each rent line follows its income account's tax setting, and the screens say in amber that the answer is not known, so you decide.

Each choice is one of:

Add it to the rent - the tax is on the tenant's invoice.
Included in the rent - you pay it - the tenant's invoice shows no tax. The tax is still owed: TaDa Books works it out of the rent, books it as your Sales Tax Expense against Sales Tax Payable, and puts it on your return. Where a state taxes rent, the tax is owed whether or not you pass it on; in a state where the tax is on the landlord's gross income, the rate you pass it on at is a little higher than the tax rate, and "included" works out exactly the tax on the gross.
Do not tax rent - the rent stays off the return entirely (it is not even an exempt sale there).

Rent is taxed in the property's state, never the tenant's, at the property's local area: pick one on its profile, or leave it on Automatic and its address ZIP decides. You also need your sales tax rate for that state (Company settings > Company info > Sales tax on invoices); without one the card says so and nothing is charged.

Lines that are not rent - furniture rented with a unit, which some states tax as a rental of goods even where rent is not - can carry their own answer: Rent > Kinds, a kind of your own set to Always taxed or Never taxed. Presets always follow the rent.

Changing any of these affects rent billed from then on. An invoice already written keeps what it charged, and editing it later keeps its state and whether the tax was included, even if the property's state is corrected in between. A rent invoice that you copy or memorize stays rent for its property, and a credit memo for the property gives the tax back the way it was charged.

Rent at its own rate. Some states tax rent at a rate of its own - an Arizona city taxes commercial rent at its own rate, with no state share. Set it on the property's card under This property's own rate on rent (from a date; a later change adds a new rate, and rent already billed keeps its rate), or once for the whole state in Company settings > Company info > Rates by kind of sale, and lodging taxes. Where a state's rent is taxed at its own rate only and none is set, nothing is charged and the card says so in amber, rather than charging the rate for goods.

Rent your manager collects. It arrives on the manager's statements, and it reaches your sales tax return from there. When a statement is turned into entries, a property whose rent is taxed included gets two more lines in its proposal - Sales Tax Expense and Sales Tax Payable, on the property's class - so you see the tax before you post. Where the tax is added, the tenant paid it to the manager and it arrives as its own statement line; map it to Sales Tax Payable, and if a taxed property's page shows no tax collected, the proposal says how much is owed. Posting the page records what each property owes; the return shows it as Rent your manager collected, with what the entries booked beside it. Undoing, editing or voiding a posted page after its month is filed carries the difference to your next return.

Short stays and lodging taxes

A stay is taxed differently from a tenancy. Many places charge a lodging tax on short stays - Hawaii's Transient Accommodations Tax reaches stays under 180 consecutive days - with its own registration and its own return, on top of any sales tax.

Set your rate on the lodging tax in Company settings > Company info > Rates by kind of sale, and lodging taxes. That registers you for it, and the Sales Tax page shows its own return.
Let the property short-term on its card under Short stays: added to the guest's bill, or included in your nightly price (you pay it, booked as Lodging Tax Expense). Where you collect more than one lodging tax in the state (a state tax and a county tax), tick the ones that reach the property; none is charged until you do.

Hawaii's four county transient accommodations taxes (Oahu, Maui, Kauai and Hawaii County) are on the list, beside the state's. A county or city room tax that is not listed - a tourist development tax, an occupancy tax - can be added under Rates by kind of sale, and lodging taxes > Add your own, with the law's name and its stay limit. Only your company sees it; it carries no rate until you type yours, and it can be taken off the list while nothing uses it.

Every stay at the property then carries the lodging tax on its income lines - the nights, cleaning, fees - but not a deposit. An invoice you write for the property shows a Short stay tick (untick it for a long tenancy at the same property); a lease shorter than the tax's limit counts as a stay, a longer one or one with no end does not. The guest's paper shows one line per lodging tax under the sales tax. Editing a stay keeps its lodging tax as written, and a credit memo for it gives back the lodging tax at the rate the stay was charged.

Deposits, move-outs and notices

Deposits are real accounting: received into a held liability, applied to the final month or itemized at move-out, with the itemization doubling as the letter you send. Once a deposit is received its amount, date and holding account stay fixed (void the receipt and record it again to change them), and voiding a last month's rent payment gives the deposit back as held. The days you have to return a deposit after move-out come from your state's rule (Rentals setup, Notice periods), with the law it comes from. "Your state" is the state the property sits in: give a property its own State in the property window when it differs from the company's (a Nevada company with a California rental), and every rule for it follows that state; where no rule for your state is on file yet, Coming up says so and you can add one. Notice periods and eviction steps follow your state's rules for the tenancy (including assistance programmes with their own longer notices), and the Coming up tab surfaces every deadline while it can still be met.

Where a rent late fee posts. By default a late fee TaDa Books charges on a lease posts with the rent, to the rent income account: late fees are rent. To report them on their own line, pick an account (the rental chart's Late Fee Income, or any income account) under Property books settings > Statement posting accounts > Rent late fees. A property you manage for its owner keeps its late fees in the owner's money either way.

A state's limit on late fees is a rule too (Late fee limit: the fewest grace days, and a cap as a percent of rent or in dollars). When a late fee is proposed, it waits at least the state's grace and is held to its cap, and the proposal says so. Nevada's limit is on file (no fee until 3 days after rent is due, at most 5% of the rent); add your state's if it is not.

Reading your manager's statement, and mapping rules

Upload the monthly statement your manager sends and TaDa Books reads it, proves it against the totals printed on its own last page, and drafts the entries. Each line has to land in one of YOUR accounts, and a mapping rule is what decides which one.

A rule has two halves:

What it matches. The words on your manager's statement, not anything from your books. The one that does most of the work is the manager's category: the statement has a single Description column, and each line starts with the manager's own account for it, then a dash, then what they typed ("Parts - Smoke Detectors"). The part before the first dash is the manager's category, so Manager's category is exactly Parts catches every line they filed under Parts, whatever the details say, while Description tests the whole text, details included. A line with no dash is all category, and a leading "tenant:" or "Maintenance:" is dropped, so "Maintenance: Parts" is Parts too. The rule window takes the line you opened it from apart the same way, so you can see which part is which. You can also match on the payee, the reference or check number, and the type, and combine conditions with all or any.
Where it posts. The account in your books that matching lines go to, shown with its full path so "Maintenance:Parts" is plainly the Parts account underneath Maintenance.

One condition can accept several values. Pick contains any of (or is any of) and the box turns into a list you add to: Manager's category is exactly Repair AND Payee contains any of Gary Elmore or Ricardo Franco is one rule, and either name satisfies it. The negative versions read the way you would say them out loud: contains none of wants neither. This is how you say "these two vendors, for this category" without writing the rule twice.

Brackets, when one rule needs an "either". Press Add a bracket ( ) and you get a group with its own All / Any, drawn inside real parentheses. That is how you write a rule that is otherwise impossible:

Payee contains Oasis AND ( Manager's category is exactly Commissions Paid OR Description contains Lease Fee )

The All / Any at the top combines the top-level entries; each bracket carries its own. The sentence under the rule always reads back with its brackets, so what you built is what you can check.

Type each value in full and press Enter. A name with spaces goes in exactly as it is written - no quotation marks, no commas, nothing to separate them yourself. Each one becomes its own chip, and the x on a chip removes it. The difference between contains and contains any of is only how many values it will accept: one, or as many as you add. The ? beside the operator explains all eight with an example.

To change where a rule posts, click Edit rule beside a line and pick a different account under Posts to. Changing a rule only affects the next statement TaDa Books reads; entries already posted stay exactly as they are. If you would rather fix one line without touching the rule, change its account on the line itself and choose Save entry only.

A green "Rule set" chip means a rule claimed that line. If instead you see an amber Rule did not fit, a rule exists for that category but its other conditions do not match this particular line - a different payee, say - so it left the line alone and the account is still yours to pick. Open it and the rule window ticks off which conditions fit and which did not, and says what this line has instead. A blue Apply this rule button means the rule fits but was made after these entries were generated, so nothing was filled in yet: press it and the account the rule posts to drops into the line. The button goes away once the line has an account.

No account fits? Make one without leaving the page. Type the name you want into the account box and pick Add account at the bottom of the list. It joins your chart straight away, on the right side of the books for that line (an expense on money going out, income on money coming in), and the line is filled in with it. The same Add account sits in the rule window's Posts to picker.

One condition, several names. When a rule already tests a field and you press the suggestion chip for that same field, the value joins the existing condition rather than adding a second one. That matters: two separate Payee conditions under all could never both be true, so the rule would quietly match nothing. Adding to the list is what you meant.

A property will not post while any of its lines has no account. The Post button stays greyed with a note saying how many are still waiting, because a half-mapped property is not something to post and find out about later.

The statement summary

Summary, beside Print and Download, opens a window that adds up what you are looking at: every statement, or the series you picked, from the month chosen through the newest statement. A manager's statement runs from the day after the last one (Sep 25 to Oct 23, say), so the summary always covers whole statements. It shows what the manager held when the period began, what came in (rent, reimbursements, late fees, deposits, and anything you put in), what was spent, as a chart of the manager's own categories, what was distributed to you and whether each distribution is in your books, and what is left. Below that come one row per statement (when you look at more than one) and one per property. Matches the statements means every one of those figures equals, to the cent, what the statements themselves printed.

Posted, and matching the statement

The lines of each entry come in groups that belong together, each statement line's two sides and each property's rent with the fee and the share that make it up, shaded alternately so you can see where each starts. Each group leads with what the money is about, then the manager's account: the rent or a reimbursement first when money comes in, the bill or fee first when it goes out. The entry posts in the same order you review it.

A property's rent line names its tenant when everything the manager received as rent that month came from that one person, so the tenant's profile under Customers shows what they paid. A month two people paid toward (a tenant and a housing agency, say) posts without a name, and a tenant who is not in your Contacts yet is left unnamed until you add them.

An entry already in your books shows its own memo and payee. When it moves the property's money out of the manager's account into one of your bank accounts it reads Owner distribution, with the bank it went to ("to Houses Series Checking"), even if you typed it as a journal entry with no memo; money the other way reads Owner contribution.

With every property collapsed, each one still says where it stands: a blue to post chip with a count while this statement's entries for it are waiting, and a green Posted chip once they are all in your books.

On the right, Books is the property's balance in your books next to the statement's ending. Both are read at the statement's own date, so an entry you make after it, such as the owner distribution at month end, does not make a matching property read "off". That later amount sits beside the comparison in a grey chip with the date it starts from ("-$813.00 after 09/24"), and the Statements vs books card shows the same total as "Entered after", until the next statement brings it in.

Who paid rent this month

When a statement is uploaded, the property list under By property also shows how the month's rent came in, read straight off the statement. A band above the properties sums it up: how much rent was collected against what the properties usually bring in, and a count for each kind of property. Click a count to show only those properties; click it again for all. The counts belong to the series on screen, so picking another series starts them fresh, and a count you picked always stays visible while it is on, even when no property has it.

Each property carries its own chip:

Rent with the amount, green: the month is paid, at least the property's usual rent. A small sparkle means it arrived early, before the month began.
Partial, amber: some rent came in, but less than usual.
Behind, orange: nothing for this month, but the tenant paid toward an earlier month during it. Someone lives there and is catching up.
Not in yet, blue: last month was paid and this month's has not arrived by the statement's date. It may simply come later in the month.
Last paid, red, with the day the tenant last paid anything, how much, and the months it covered ("Last paid Aug 5 - $1,300 for May, Jun"): nothing has come in for this month or the ones before it, so the unit may be empty, or the tenant stopped paying. Hover the chip for the months still unpaid.

A payment counts for the month the statement says it pays, so rent paid on the 28th for next month counts for next month. A payment that names no month counts for the month it was paid in, unless that month was already paid, in which case a payment in its last days is taken as next month's rent paid early. "Usual rent" is the property's own recent months, so a change of rent needs no setting anywhere.

A new tenant sets a new rent. The statement names who paid each rent. When the rent starts coming from a new name and the previous payers never pay again, that is a new tenant, so the usual rent starts over: their first rent reads New rent (never "Partial" against the last tenant's rent), and from then on only their own months count. A tenant who skips months and then catches up is the same name, so it still reads behind or partial; roommates who take turns paying are one tenancy. A move-in month is often prorated or carries extras, so it never sets the usual rent on its own: the new tenant's second month is shown as received, not judged against the move-in, and once there are two more months the move-in month stops counting at all. Hover the chip to see when the new tenant started and what the last tenant paid.

A bounced payment taken back comes off the month that payment was for, not the month the bank reversed it, so a tenant whose August payment bounced in September is short for August, and September is judged on its own.

Beside the chip, in violet, is what came in on this statement since the previous one, whatever month it paid for: Rent (prepaid rent included) and Reimb. for reimbursements such as utilities, repairs, parts and the eviction fees a tenant pays back, plus Late fees when there were any, and Other fees (application or lease fees) on the rare statement that has them, then Paid: all of those added up, what the tenant paid in total since the last statement (a security deposit is not in it: it is held, not paid toward anything). After it, Spent is what the manager paid out for the property in the same stretch (fees, dues, repairs, utilities; a distribution to you is not spending), and Net is Paid less Spent: what the property left for you. The chip answers "is this month paid"; the violet figures answer "what did they actually pay since last time", so an underpayment or a tenant catching up on older months shows even when the month itself reads paid or behind. The band totals the same figures for the whole list, and the hover lists the reimbursements by kind. Deposits received are shown in the hover only, since they pay nothing off.

The lease on file looks out of date. When the property has one lease in Rent and tenants that is still open, the statement checks it: a deposit paid back after the lease began (a move-out refund), or rent coming from someone the lease does not name, while the lease still says the previous tenant lives there. The property then shows an amber Lease out of date chip - hover it for what the statement shows - and the same chip appears on the lease's row on the Rent tab. Click it there to set the old tenant's move-out date, and use the button beside it to start the new tenant's lease. A previous tenant's deposit going back within two months of a new lease, with nobody paying since, is not taken as a move-out.

While the lease is current (its tenants are the ones paying, or the statement names no payers), the month is judged against the rent on the lease instead of the property's usual rent: the hover says so, and a tenant paying less than the lease says reads Partial.

Hover a chip to see twelve months of rent for the property as bars, green for a full month, amber for a short one, and a stub for a month with nothing, with the payments behind this month's figure listed below. The printed and downloaded property list carries the same words on a line of its own for each property.

Owner statements

For any property or the whole portfolio, generate an owner statement: the money by property, the rent roll, what is outstanding and what is held. Print it or save it as PDF for partners, lenders or your own records.