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.
Once the budget has been locked, it can be reconciled. To learn how to lock a budget, refer to this article. To start the reconciliation process, click the Reconcile button:
Step 1 - Reconcile Schedules
The first step of the reconciliation will wash up the actual expense invoices for each expense account within the schedule. The actual expenditure amount uses the net or gross amount from each included invoice depending on the basis of the schedule.
- When the process first begins, all schedules require checking and marking as complete. Use the buttons at the top and bottom to mark all schedules in the budget are complete/incomplete
- By default all schedules will be collapsed. Use these buttons to expand and collapse all schedules
- Once a schedule has been marked as complete, it will be green, collapsed and have a green tick
- Each individual schedule can be expanded and collapsed by clicking on the arrow
- Each actual expenditure figure for the expense accounts can be edited. Just click on the number, make the necessary change and click the tick to save. Clicking the cross will cancel the edit
- Clicking on the actual expenditure figure opens a pop up which lists out the invoices that make up the total (see below)
- Clicking on the allocation percentage figure opens a pop up which shows all the areas percentage and non-recoverable percentage (see below)
Actual Expenditure pop up:
Allocation Percentage pop up:
Note: You need to mark all schedules as complete to move on to the next step.
Step 2 - Allocate Income to Area
This step is only necessary if you have had tenants over your budget period who have occupied more than one area. If all your tenants only occupy a single area the reconciliation process will automatically skip this step. Here you are required allocate the income from those tenants and allocate it to the respective areas.
1. The Auto Populate feature can save you time by scanning and pre-populating these allocations for you. If you use this feature you will notice values being added in the table below.
2. The table below allows you to add in areas that the tenant in question has occupied as well as allocate the invoiced income or credit notes to those areas. If needed you can split income across multiple areas or edit details that have been Auto Populated in step 1
3. Once you're done with the allocations and have verified that all income has been allocated you may mark that tenant as Complete. Once all tenants have been attended to you may mark the entire list as complete and progress to the next step.
Step 3 - Reconcile Areas
The second step will focus on the areas allocation and the tenants responsible for covering the allocation.
- All areas require checking and marking as complete. Use the buttons at the top and bottom to mark all areas in the budget as complete/incomplete
- The area expenditure is split across the schedules. Clicking on the area expenditure figure opens a pop up which lists the expense accounts in the schedule with the budgeted cost, total expenditure and then the expenditure based on the allocation of the area (see below)
- The adjusted expenditure per tenancy is calculated based on either the area's actual expenditure or any concession if applicable. This will then be divided by the number of days the tenancy was in occupation during the budget period. Clicking on the adjusted expenditure figure opens a pop up which will show this breakdown (see below)
- The invoiced amount per tenancy is made up of income invoices with an issue date during the budget period that has used the Tenancy Income account code which was set when creating the budget. Clicking on the figure opens a pop up which shows the invoices (see below)
- The Invoice/Credit amount is the adjusted expenditure, less the invoiced amount. This figure can be edited. Just click on the number, make the necessary change and click the tick to save. Clicking the cross will cancel the edit
- Each tenancy can be marked as complete. Once an individual tenancy has been marked as complete, it will be green, collapsed and have a green tick
Area Expenditure pop up:
Adjusted Expenditure pop up:
Invoiced pop up:
Step 4 - Client/Owner Contribution
The third step outlines what the client or owner needs to contribute to the budget. There may be allocation shortfalls resulting from one of the following:
- Any concessions applied
- Any vacant areas
- Percentage shortfall (account allocations that are not 100% allocated)
This is the total expenditure for the budget
- The total expenditure for the budget is split across each schedule
- If there were any non-recoverable amounts these are shown here. Clicking on the figure opens a pop up which displays each schedule with the budgeted cost, the actual expenditure, the non-recoverable amount and the shortfall (see below)
- The total owner contribution amount can be edited. Just click on the number, make the necessary change and click the tick to save. Clicking the cross will cancel the edit
- Mark the owner contribution as complete
Step 5 - Summary
The fourth step provides a summary of the reconciliation and also outlines the total balancing charges that will need to be generated to charge to tenants in the next step.
Once you proceed after this step, you cannot return to any of the previous steps and the following warning will be shown -
Step 6 - Generate Balancing Charges
The final step of the process is generating the balancing invoices and credit notes for the tenancies and owner included in the budget. Once you proceed to this step you cannot return to any of the previous steps. A warning message will be displayed:
Set the default account code for all the invoices/credit notes to be generated for the tenants. This list will be populated with the account codes set for balancing charges when the budget is first created. If there was only one, this will be selected for all tenants by default
- The default tax type will be set automatically to the type associated with the account code and be set for all tenants
- The default PDF template is set to default which is the default set in the company settings. This can be changed to any of the existing templates for the company
- For Trust Accounting, the ledger must be set. For Xero, the tracking code(s) will be displayed to be selected
- Click Refresh to see the status update
- Select all invoices/credit notes to be generated or select individual lines to generate
- Click Edit to update the account code, tax type, PDF template or ledger/tracking code(s) for an individual invoice/credit note. You can then either save the changes, or cancel
- Once you've selected what you want to generate, click the Generate button. A summary of what is going to be generated is shown, click Confirm to start the generation. Once an invoice/credit note is being generated, the status is updated to Processing. Once it's completed, the invoice/credit note number will be displayed with a link to view
- Up until the budget is finalised, you can come and go from the step to generate what you need to. When you have finished generating, the budget can be finalised but clicking Finalise Budget. Once the budget is finalised, you will not be able to return to this step