Before we start, we should clarify what a rental ledger actually is; a rental ledger is a complete record of every rent payment you have made that your agent has receipted, and the dates that the rent covers.

1. The date it was generated

    

2. Tenant name and address

    

3. Audit trail number

   This is a system generated reference number.

4. Transaction date

    

5. Ref

   This is the receipt/transaction number and these are automatically generated.

6. Method

   This refers to the payment method of the transaction.

7. Type

   This is where the funds are allocated. The most common types are:

   • Rent – applied to your rent and disbursed to the owner
   • Let Fee – applied to your rent and disbursed to the agency
   • Deposit – May be applied to rent, bond or invoices or may be refunded (if applicable).
   • Water or Invoice – applied to your invoice and disbursed to the owner
   • Bond – applied to your bond and disbursed to the RTA

8. Details

   This shows a description of what the payment is for. For rent payments, this shows the ‘paid from’ and ‘paid to’ dates (dates are inclusive).

9. Debit

   This column shows any monies that have been paid out. For example, when the bond you’ve paid is disbursed to the RTA, the full amount will show in the Debit column with details of where the money has been paid to.

10. Credit

    This column shows what money has been receipted.

11. Balance

    This column shows the total amount of money paid to your account and either goes up or down depending on money that has been credited or debited.

The credit amount is responsible for a lot of confusion! But it doesn’t have to be confusing; here’s a simple way of looking at it:

In this example, we have a property that is $400 per week ($800 per fortnight).
The tenant pays rent of $800 which will look like this on their ledger:

Now, let’s say that the tenant pays $600 towards their rent. It’s not quite a full two weeks rent and will look like this on their ledger:

You’ll notice in the Details column that the rent ‘paid to’ date is now showing as 19/08/2018 rather than 26/08/2018 like the first example.

This is because the $600 that was paid made up a full weeks rent ($400, paying the rent from 13/08 to 19/08) plus an additional $200. Until the tenant pays the remaining $200 to make up another weeks rent, the credit amount will remain on the ledger.

Once the other $200 is paid, the system will see the credit and recognise it as a full weeks rent and it will look like this on the ledger:

Where it can be helped, we always recommend paying your rent as a whole week or fortnight rather than split payments; although they can be easily explained, credit amounts can not only be confusing but they can make your ledger look messy and difficult to read.