Income category for reimbursements from tenants (utilities, etc.)

I need a new income category for utility reimbursement. Many landlords depending on building type may bill back their utilities or a portion to the tenant. Right now the only category that would work in would just be the high-level income category. It would be nice to break this up further to a “utility reimbursement” category under income.

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I agree. I have just ran into the same situation.

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@freedomrentalhomes @419rentalproperties There’s an existing “Tenant Reimbursements” category under Income, which is intended to cover exactly this scenario (among others). Give it a try!

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@devin Thanks. I can see where that could be used for that and see your point. I considered that category more for say you have a clogged drain and you as the owner pay for it. Turns out it was the tenant’s fault and you charge them for the fix. That would fall under that category as more of a one-off expense not something that may come in every month. It still would be nice to break it up further for reporting reasons.

@devin if i am putting the water bill under the refund that the tenants reimburse me for will this show up different in the tax package, vs tenant reimbursement category?

@levelupproperties1 Yes, it will show up differently. “Tenant Pass-Throughs” is an “Income” category and will report out as such on your financial reports. We strongly suggest consulting with your CPA to determine the proper tax reporting of all “Income” sub-categories.

If you categorize money received from a tenant as a refund to a “Utilities” expense account, it will effectively lower the total “Utilities” expenses shown in your financial reports.

It’s up to you how you want to handle this and how closely you want to track the actual flow of dollars between various parties.

Did you change “tenant reimbursements” to “Tenant Pass-throughs” under income? I agree with others, it would be great to have a tenant income for extra expenses they pay towards utilities.
Thanks!

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@amysnewton Good catch. Yes, we renamed this Income sub-category to “Tenant Pass-Throughs” to make it more applicable to any expense or charge paid by a tenant. This continues to be the best sub-category to use when a tenant reimburses you for utilities.

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If you categorize money received from a tenant as a refund to a “Utilities” expense account, it will effectively lower the total “Utilities” expenses shown in your financial reports.

Question: If I do that as per above, it only specify to the unit number, not the tenants name. Then the utility bill belong to the tenants still showing “balance due”

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For short term rentals we sometimes charge tax from the guest which we later have to remit to the city/state etc. Would you put this in the tenant pass-through as well? When we pay the tax it gets categorized as an expense

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I’d like to resurrect this post.

Now that we have the rent payment feature, and if I bill-back a tenant for Water & Sewer, and categorize this as Water & Sewer, it does NOT show on the tenant ledger that this was paid.

If I paid $50 for water and sewer, and bill-back $50 to the tenant, and I choose “Tenant pass throughs”, the income statement/cash flow reports do not actively reflect what these “pass throughs” are for. I may bill-back my tenant for oil delivery, electric bill, and water bill. This really “muddys” things - ESPECIALLY now that I am billing them through Stessa for payment.

How can we fix this issue? I don’t understand how this is not already posted about rent payment workflows in other posts.

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Maybe a quick fix would be to allow the TENANT to be chosen, instead of only the UNIT

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I get what you are all saying about keeping up with utilities billed back to the tenants. However, I have found a way to keep my books straight. When I pay the utility, I show it paid for the Unit # of my tenant and put it under the correct utility so that I have a tax record to deduct later and a record of the payment. I do this under the transactions tab. Then I go to the tenant ledger and add a charge under tenant pass-throughs with a note about what it is paying for. This creates a balance due for the utility on the tenant ledger so that I don’t forget to collect from them. When they pay, I again use the tenant ledger to show a payment through tenant pass-throughs again and it reduces the balance due from the tenant back to their normal rent due or $0.00 if they are all paid up. This might not work if you have a lot of tenants to do this for, but it works pretty good for a small tenant base. Hope this info helps someone. It took me trial & error to figure out how to make it work out right in my books but this seems to do the trick.

Did you ever get an answer on this? I am running into the same issue.

nope =( unfortunately not

Agreed. This doesn’t make sense to NOT be able to assign it to a tenant.

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