When the charges being raised for a Tenancy are to be reduced, a negative line item can be added to the rent or outgoings templates to show as a reduction on the invoices. The negative line cannot make the Net Rent total $0 or less. Users with Trust Accounting may only use a negative line item where all lines on the template or invoice use the same ledger.
It is recommended to use Rent Reviews to schedule reminders to add new templates closer to the effective date of changes to avoid scheduling new Rents out of order.
There is an option on the Rent and Outgoings page to add New Rent templates to accommodate short term future changes - they should all be on the same billing cycle, eg 1st of the month. In the example below, the discount ends after 12 months. There can be more than one Future Rent, add as many templates as required.
** If the rent template includes other charges, and the rent changes are to be made over a long period of time, events such as changes to budgets might occur earlier. If a new budget was approved for the below example with a start date of 1/04/2020, the new template for 1/5/2020 would override those changes and charge the outgoings at the previously entered rate. Use Rent Reviews instead of New Rent Templates to avoid this becoming a problem:
What about Fees?
Clients with trust accounts should consider how fees should be raised against the invoice with negative line items. The example below shows invoice lines where the discount uses the same income code as the rent charges.
If the fee rule for this property is based on Money in/out of an Account, the fee is calculated against each line of the invoice where the Account matches the fee rule. The result is a negative entry for the discounted amount, when the fees are disbursed the negative amount is deducted from the positive amounts.
The example below uses a different income Account for the discounted amount. The Money in/out of an Account fee rule does not include this Account so no fee is raised for that line item.
If your fee rule is based on Rent Receipted, the fee will be calculated as a single entry against the total value of the invoice, including all line items even those which are not for rental charges, regardless of Accounts used:
Where the charges are to be reduced only once, it can be more convenient to raise and apply a credit note.