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, refer to this article or contact support.
Re-Leased has the ability to create a budget by area, allowing users to specify the areas to include within the budget.
To add a new budget by area to a property:
- Click on the Outgoings tab on the left then the Budgets tab at the top
- Click on the New Budget By Area button
Step 1: Enter the following details:
- Title (this must be unique)
- Start Date (the dates can be the same across multiple budgets)
- End Date
- Notes (if applicable - this is not mandatory) - these can be included in reports
- Tax Basis (net or gross) - if the property is commercial, the basis on the budget is set to Net by default and if it's residential it's set to Gross. This can be changed from the default if needed. If you have a mixed property you can also change the basis at a schedule level if it differs from the budget (in step 3). The basis doesn't have any affect on the budgeted amounts but it comes into play in reports and during reconciliation where actual amounts will be displayed based on the basis selected
- Tenancy Income Codes - set one or multiple revenue codes to be used to help identify which income invoices are related to the budget
- Owner Contribution Income Codes - set one or multiple equity, asset or liability codes to be used to track any contributions the owner needs to make to cover the budget
- Balancing Charge Income Codes - set one or multiple revenue codes to be used when generating invoices or credit notes for the tenancies during reconciliation. If there was a need to distinguish between income generated during the budget and after, set this to a different code from Tenancy Income. If there was a need to ensure balancing charges are not included in the following year's reconciliation, use a different code from Tenancy Income
Step 2: Select Areas to be included
This next step will involve selecting the areas to be included in the budget. A full list of active areas created against the property will be displayed and by default, all lettable areas will be set to be included but this can be edited.
- Search for a single area
- Show/Hide excluded areas
- Show/Hide non-lettable areas
- Include/Exclude all areas in the budget
- Include/Exclude individual areas in the budget
- Edit the individual area details
Step 3: Create Schedules
Each budget must have at least one schedule. A schedule is a way to group certain expense codes together within the budget. Each schedule must have one or more expense codes and expense codes cannot be used across multiple schedules within the same budget. The areas included across schedules can differ.
- Set a title for the schedule
- Allocation basis is optional but the options are:
- Percentage of Floor Area or
- Tenancy Percentages. If Tenancy Percentage, the Outgoings Percentage field on each tenancy is pulled through to the budget. If this is not set, the allocation percentage will show as zero
- If the Percentage of Floor Area is selected, specify whether this should be calculated on all areas included in the budget or all areas within the schedule. This does not show if Tenancy Percentages is selected. If the area doesn't have a size set, this will show zero allocation.
- The tax basis (gross or net) set on the budget details will have defaulted, but this can be changed.
- If an allocation basis is not used, the percentages for each area can be entered manually. If an allocation basis was selected, the allocation percentage will be set automatically but can be edited. If there is less than 100%, the remainder will be 'Non-Recoverable'
- Include/exclude areas from the schedule
If any areas are vacant, there will be no tenancy shown.
Step 4: Select Accounts
A schedule must include at least one expense account.
- Search and select an expense account to add to the schedule. If an expense account is used in another schedule or in another budget with an overlapping budget period, it won't be shown in the list
- Enter the budgeted cost per expense account
- The allocation percentage per area which was entered in step 3, is pulled through but it can be edited per expense account
- Remove an expense account
- Save the current schedule and create a new one
- Save and finish the create budget process and view the budget details
The budget is now in a draft state.