Hi, just setting up QF to handle accounts for a small company formed to manage a shared freehold property.
Each of 4 tenants(directors) will pay regular monthly contributions to a maintenance fund (we already do that to an existing Barclays bank account).
I was wondering how best to record the monthly payments to the account:
should I set up a new ‘holding account’ or can I simply use the Bank Account?
what do I record the monthly contributions as? Sales? Do I need to issue monthly invoices?
Is it worth setting up separate nominal accounts for each of the tenants - e.g. to record ‘cash on hand’ or to record who paid a particular expense?
It would be great if QF was able to reconcile with the bank account to show who is up-to date with payments.
For expenses, I intend to categorise each expense e.g. as insurance, repairs, certificates etc.
thanks in advance for any help - I couldn’t find this scenario in the forums.
A little confused on how this works as you mention it is for a maintenance fund but the money is coming from tenants, who are also directors?
If you said the directors are paying money into the company’s existing Barclays bank account.
I would have said record a bank transfer from the directors loan account (or set up and account for each director if you wish to separate them) to the maintenance fund account (Barclays bank account).
You would record rent payments from the tenants as Sales (income).
Just to be on the safe side, you may wish to clarify with your accountant.
The freehold of the building is shared equally between 4 residents and the company was established purely to manage this situation. No rent is collected from the residents; they each own their share of the building.
The residents have always paid monthly into a maintenance fund - to cover shared expenses such as insurance, shared building works and renovations.
We have just used a spreadsheet up to now but looking to upgrade and we don’t have an accountant but I am experienced in running books for other small companies (currently using Wave but looking to move those later too).
I think I will set up an account to reflect the shared Barclays bank account, so I am wondering if I can avoid issuing invoices each month to each resident - by somehow linking the bank account and automatically categorising the inbound payments to each resident.
Maybe I can create an account for each resident that tracks what they owe… or maybe I could create an annual invoice with 12 items and each month the payments lower the outstanding amount…does that make sense?
So I guess it would be down to personal preference
You could just record the payments as I mentioned earlier.
Or
If you wish to track amounts owing, set them up as clients, record recurring invoices on each client (12 monthly occurrences). and log the payments against the invoices. (Using this method would record the payments under the sales category).
Please keep in mind the support staff are not registered accountants.
Hello Dave, I helped my brother set up Quickfile for a similar scenario - 8 apartments all Freehold.
The Apartments are set up as separate Clients in Sales. eg Apartment 1 etc.
Then recurring Sales Invoices for Management/Maintenance Charges have been set up to be raised automatically on the 1st of every month against each apartment.
“Log Payment” option is then selected as each invoice is paid.
Regards, David