understanding your
rental ledger

Unless you’ve worked in the real estate industry before or have a lot of experience with rental ledgers, they can look like a foreign language! We’ve put together some information on how to read your rental ledger so you’re not left scratching your head!

what is a rental ledger?

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.

what information can I find on my ledger?

  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.

what does the credit amount mean?

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:

Audit Date Ref Method Type Details Debit Credit Balance
0012.34567 12/08/2018 123 DEP Rent 13/08/2018 to 26/08/2018 $800.00 $2,800.00

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:

Audit Date Ref Method Type Details Debit Credit Balance
0012.34567 12/08/2018 123 DEP Rent 13/08/2018 to 19/08/2018
(Credit $200.00)
$600.00 $2,600.00

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:

Audit Date Ref Method Type Details Debit Credit Balance
0012.34567 12/08/2018 123 DEP Rent 13/08/2018 to 19/08/2018
(Credit $200.00)
$600.00 $2,600.00
0012.34568 14/08/2018 124 DEP Rent 20/08/2018 to 26/08/2018 $200.00 $2,800.00

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. Street Ninety Nine - Understanding Your Rental Ledger