Those located in Europe will use the terms Service Charges, where customers located in North America and Asia-Pacific will use the term Outgoings. Those located in North America will also refer to tenants as Leases. For the purpose of this article, we will refer to it as Outgoings and Tenants. For more information on regional terminology, please refer to this article.
The following is how to undo known workarounds for dealing with tenancies within a budget who occupy multiple areas now that we are developing that area.
WORKAROUND 1: Amalgamate all areas that a tenancy occupies into a single area and add that area into the budget
1. Create each area separated out, ie if it has been ‘Units 1,2,3’ then create three separate areas called ‘Unit 1’ / ‘Unit 2’ / ‘Unit 3’
2. Add those areas to the tenancy and remove the amalgamated unit
3. Go into the budget and modify to ensure these individual units are included, and remove the amalgamated unit
4. Check that the budget is as expected and re-approve it
5. Ensure the income to area is split accordingly when reconciling
6. Archive the amalgamated area to ensure the property areas show correctly in all reports and are not overstated
Pitfalls: Previous reconciled budgets will be affected by this. It would be recommended to download all reports and information from those before inflicting this change. This means that RL will not be a source of truth for looking into previous budget reconciliations.
WORKAROUND 2: Only add one of the areas that a tenancy occupies into the budget
1. Modify the budget to include all areas for multiple area tenancies
2. Ensure the percentage allocations are correct and re-approve the budget
3. Ensure the income to area is split accordingly when reconciling
Pitfalls: None known.
WORKAROUND 3: Leave the areas as-is and remember to manually amend the balancing charges upon budget recon
1. Going forward, there should be no need to manually amend, and the income to area should be split accordingly when reconciling
Pitfalls: None known.
WORKAROUND 4: Set up multiple tenancies where a duplicate tenant is created that occupies each area and add all those areas into a budget
**Recommend doing this after reconciling the current period**
1. Using one “primary” tenancy, add all multiple areas under that one tenancy
2. Vacate the secondary tenancy(ies) as at the end of the current budget period
3. Archive the secondary tenancy(ies)
4. Ensure the new budget shows that one primary tenancy correctly within the budget for each of the multiple areas, and approve the new budget ensuring to update the charging template
5. If any income for the new period was demanded on the secondary tenancy(ies), this will need to be credited from the secondary tenancy(ies) and re-raised on the primary tenancy
6. Ensure the income to area is split accordingly when reconciling
Pitfalls: It is a longer process to resolve and it is important to perform this after reconciling the current budget. If this is completed mid-budget period, it will require a lot of income invoices and credit notes to be raised on the correct tenancy.