Working with Accounts

Accounts in WeconnectU are grouped together and displayed on the Accounts Dashboard for all assets. You can navigate to the Accounts Dashboard by selecting the Account Dashboard option from the Accounts menu dropdown list to display a list of all Accounts.  Note that you will only be able to work with Accounts in WeconnectU if the "Manage Accounts" permission on your user profile has been enabled.

Alternatively you can use the Ctrl + A shortcut from anywhere in the system to quickly jump to the selected Accounts Dashboard for any selected Asset.

The Account Dashboard for an Asset is used to access and work with the different Accounts available in RAMS. You can use the Account Type dropdown filter to select different Account Types. The following Account Types are supported:

  • Tenant Account (default selection) - this is a Lease Account and includes all tenant billings and payments as well as any tenant account corrections for a specific Lease and is managed as a typical debtors account.
  • Tenant Deposit Account - this is an account that is managed by the agency on behalf of the Tenant. It includes all investments, interest and withdrawal transactions made for a specific Lease and is managed as a liability account.
  • Landlord Income Account - this is an Asset Income Account for a specific Mandate and includes all the Rental Income and Services Recovery transactions associated with Leases for an Asset. The balance of this account represents income due to the Landlord and the account is managed as a Tenant Debtors Account on behalf of the Landlord. The difference between this account and the Tenant account is that it excludes any transactions between the Tenant and the agency such as admin and deposit type transactions.
  • Landlord Expense Account - this is an Asset Expense Account for a specific Mandate and includes all the Landlord Expense transactions associated with an Asset. The balance of this account represents expenses due by the Landlord and the account is managed as a Landlord Creditors Account on behalf of the Landlord. 
  • Landlord Deposit Account - this is an account that is managed by the agency on behalf of the Landlord. It includes all investments, interest and withdrawal transactions made for a specific Mandate of an Asset and is managed as a liability account.
  • Building Expense Account - this is an Asset Group Expense Account for a specific Asset Group of type Building and includes all the Building Expense transactions associated with the Building Asset Group. The balance of this account represents building level expenses due and the account is managed as a Building Creditors Account on behalf of the Building Owners.

Account Dashboard Components

When you View an asset in your Account Dashboard, three Summary cards are displayed as shown below.

  • Asset Detail Card - shows basic information about the Asset, Primary Landlord Contact, Lease and Primary Tenant Contact
  • Notes Card - shows Account Notes with capability to add new notes and update or delete existing notes
  • Balances Card - shows important balances and wallet references
    • Landlord Wallet - amount of money paid by the Landlord  which have not been used yet and is available in the Trust Account
    • Tenant Wallet - amount of money paid by the Tenant which have not been used yet and is available in the Trust Account
    • Landlord Balance - Landlord Income Due minus Landlord unpaid Expenses

In addition to the Summary Cards, the following features are available:

  • Account Selector dropdown - use this to switch Accounts on or off for display purposes. The Tenant Account, Landlord Income Due and Landlord Expense Accounts are by default switched on when you open any Account Dashboard.
  • Account Search - use this to search on any portion of a transaction description or an amount across accounts on the Dashboard. 

A typical Account consist of 4 panels (see example Tenant Account below) namely:

  • Transactions - this is where the Account Transactions are displayed
  • Categories - this is where the Category / Beneficiary links are defined and where category priorities can be changed
  • Billing Rules - this is where the current Billing rules for the account are displayed and where new Billing Rules can be defined
  • Category Balances - this is where the current balances for categories are displayed. By default only categories with balances are displayed with the option to also show zero balance categories.

How to load Account Transactions manually

Account Transactions can be loaded manually on an Account where it is permitted with the aid of the Add Transaction feature. When you click on the  Add Transaction link, the Transaction form is displayed as shown in the example below:

With reference to the Transaction form, note the following:

  • Type - this field is used to specify whether the transaction is an invoice, debit note or credit note
  • Source Reference - this field is optional if you would like to include a reference number
  • Effective Date - the date that will be displayed on the statement that will determine the sequence in which transactions are displayed on the statement
  • Category - the category for the transaction selected from the list of categories available for the account. 
    • Note that when the Rent category is selected, the system will automatically make a corresponding entry on the Landlord Income Account.
    • When you select the Maintenance category two additional options will become available on the form (see example below) namely:
      • Recover to Landlord - tick this box to indicate that the maintenance was paid by the Landlord and that this transaction represents a cost recovery to the Landlord. Once again the system will automatically make a corresponding entry on the Landlord Income Account for the recovery.
      • Select Sub-Category- if it is not a recovery transaction, you need to select a Contractor Beneficiary from the dropdown list when you create or select a new sub-category.  The system keeps a sub-category for every Maintenance Contractor beneficiary. When you select a beneficiary from the list, the transaction amount will be added to the sub-category for the selected beneficiary and where the sub-category does not exists, the system will first create a sub-category for the selected beneficiary.

  • Enter Total Including VAT - tick this box to indicate that the Total includes VAT. The default is for the Total to exclude VAT.
  • VAT Type - select the VAT type from the following options:
    • No VAT
    • 14% Old Standard
    • 15% Standard Rate
    • 100% VAT Adjustment
    • Custom
  • Create - click this button to create the transaction without uploading a source document
  • Create then upload document - use this option from the Create drop down menu to upload a source document as part of the create process as shown in the example below. Click to upload the document.

Where applicable you can use the options drop down menu on an account to access any system assisted billing features such as:

  • Bill Deposit - use this option to create draft billing transactions for deposits using information captured on the Lease
  • Bill Lease Fee - use this option to create draft Lease Fee billing using information setup on the Company Lease Settings panel

How to use the Account Balances panel to analyse an Account

With reference to the example Tenant Account shown above and associated Category Balances panel on the right, note the following:

  • Paper clip icon on Transaction Description - when you hover your mouse over the paper clip icon, the source reference is displayed and you can click on the icon to open the source document for the transaction. 
  • Dot menu on right of every transaction
    • Source Document - use this option to view or upload a source document for a transaction
    • Reverse Transaction - use this option to reverse any account transaction. The system will automatically create a journal to reverse the transaction. Reversed transactions on an account are shown with strike through applied for easy reference. Reversed transactions are not included on Account Statements.
  • The category balances essentially give a breakdown of exactly what the outstanding balance consists of. In the case of the example shown above, the tenant owes R 25 180 which consists of R 24 000 for Rent, R 90 for Maintenance, R 590 for Municipal and R 500 for Body Corporate.
  • If you want to determine exactly what the Municipal category balance consists of, you can just click on the Municipal category to make it bold and the system will automatically apply a filter and show all the debits and credits for the Deposit category as shown below:

How to setup Categories and Beneficiaries

Categories and associated beneficiaries are configured on the Category panel as shown below:

With reference to the example Category panel shown above, note the following:

  • Before any payment can be made for a Category, a Beneficiary or Beneficiaries must be linked to the Category. In the example above you can see that:
    • there are two Rent beneficiaries namely Jeff and Sandy Serfontein and they have a split of 60 / 40 configured meaning that any Rent or Recovery payments made to the landlord will be split 60 / 40 between these two Landlord beneficiaries.
    • the Municipal beneficiary is the City of Cape Town
    • the Maintenance - Candoall sub-category beneficiary is CanDoAll as selected from the drop down when the billing transaction was created
    • the Maintenance - Candoall sub-category has a limit of R 200 configured meaning that all payments will be made in installments of R 200 until the category balance has been settled. This is very handy when payment arrangements are made with contractors.
    • the Maintenance Recovery and Body Corporate categories shows "Recover to Landlord" in the Beneficiary column meaning that payments towards these categories will use the Landlord as beneficiary and in the case of the example all these payments will be split 60 / 40 between Jeff and Sandy Serfontein.
  • Change Priorities - use this feature to change the relative priorities of Categories by dragging and dropping the categories to change the sequence. The # sequence number indicate the priority and the sequence in which category balances will be considered for payment when money becomes available in a wallet.
  • Link Beneficiary - click the man icon to open the form as shown below. Where a Beneficiary have already been linked, the form will also show the Percentage Split field where you can specify the % split for the Beneficiary. 

  • Edit category - use this feature to open the Category form and from where you can configure the following as shown below:
    • Transaction Source Reference - this is the Beneficiary Account Reference that will be used by default when a Payment Instruction is created for the category. In the example below this is the Municipal Account Number on the Municipal Account.
    • Recover to Landlord - tick this box to indicate that all payments towards this Category must be recovered to the Landlord or Landlords
    • Limit Category Payment Suggestion - enable this switch and specify the amount if you want to specify a maximum amount to be paid per Payment Instruction as a result of an agreed to payment arrangement. In the case of the example the amount is set to R 400 meaning that installments of R 400 will be paid until the balance for the Category has been settled in full.

  • To remove a Beneficiary from a Category - click on the Beneficiary name to open the Beneficiary Edit form for the Category. Then click on the red Remove link to remove the Beneficiary from the category as shown below:

How to configure Billing Rules for an Account

Billing Rules are configured to assist with the billing of recurring variable and fixed amounts on a monthly basis. The list of configured Billing Rules are shown on the Billing Rules panel as shown below for a Landlord Expense Account example.

With reference to the Billing Rules panel shown in the example above, note the following:

  • Billing Rules are for a specific Category - In the example there is a billing rule for the Commission - rent category to bill commission on a monthly basis to the landlord expense account (8% of rent)
  • Billing Rules have a specific Billing Day - In the case of the example, the billing day is set to two days before month-end.
  • Billing Rules have an Effective Day - In the case of the example, the Effective Day is set to the first day of the next month. This is the date of the transaction on the statement.
  • Billing Rues have a Type - Different Types of Billing Rules are:
    • percentage of rent - the Commission rule shown in the example above makes use of this type to automatically set the amount to be billed to 8% of the rent.
    • variable - use this type to specify recurring rules for services billing where the amounts need to be loaded on a monthly basis.
    • fixed - use this type to specify fixed amounts to be billed every month against an account.
  • To create a new Billing Rule, click the Add Billing Rule link to open the form as shown below. Complete the fields and click Create.

With reference to Create Billing Rule form shown above, note the following:

  • Use Lease Dates tick box - if ticked, the system will use the Lease Start and End Dates to determine whether a Billing Rule must be Active or Inactive. If you untick the box, the From Date and To Date fields will be displayed where you can then set the date period when the Billing Rule must be active.

Once a Billing Rule has been created, you can use the Edit feature to open the Billing Rule edit form as shown below:

With reference to the Edit Billing Rule example shown above, note the following:

  • Execute Billing Rule - use this feature to run the Billing Rule directly from this form. Note that this would normally be done from the Billing Schedule.
  • Suspend - tick this box to Suspend / Un-suspend the Billing Rule directly from this form. Note that this would normally be done from the Billing Schedule.
  • Remove - click this link to Remove the Billing Rule.

How to view and send Account Statements

Features to View and Send Statements are available from the Options dropdown on an Account as shown below:

To view a Tenant Statement, select the View Statement option from the Tenant Account Options dropdown menu. See example below.

To send a Tenant Statement, select the Create Email option from the Tenant Account Account Statement dropdown menu under Options.

To view an Owner Statement, select the Account Statement option from either the Landlord Income or Landlord Expense Account Options dropdown menu and then select View Statement. 

To send an Owner Statement, select the Account Statement option from either the Landlord Income or Landlord Expense Account Options dropdown menu and select Create Email.

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