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Refund a Payment to a Tenant on an Active Lease
Refund a Payment to a Tenant on an Active Lease

How to refund tenants for incorrect charges or overpayments on an active lease.

Samuel avatar
Written by Samuel
Updated over a week ago

Overview

Although rare, you may need to issue a refund to a tenant. You might decide to refund late fees, or a tenant may have accidentally overpaid you for their rent. Here we'll show you how to record the refund on the lease and also how to issue the refund either physically or electronically.

The Steps

Recording the refund on an active lease

  1. From the main menu, click on Leases and then click Active Leases.

  2. Find the lease you want to give a refund for and click on it. You can either sort the list by the various columns and filters or use the Search leases search bar.

  3. Click on the Transactions tab and then the Give Refund button.

  4. Enter the following information:

    • Paid To Tenant: pick the tenant on the lease you are paying back (there might be more than one tenant on the lease.)

    • Pay From Account: choose the property bank account you are using to pay back the tenant. (This is likely the same bank account the tenant paid into.)

    • Payment method: pick among several options to remind yourself later of how you paid the tenant.

      • Choosing the Check payment method allows for entering an optional check number and the ability to print the check later.

      • Choose ePay if you want to send them a payment electronically and you have Checkbook.io already setup for Send Payments.

    • Due Date: change the date of the refund if needed.

    • Category: the refund should be associated with the same general ledger revenue account as the payment you are refunding.

      • For example, if you are refunding a rent payment, choose the Rent revenue account. If you are refunding a late fee payment, choose Late Fees.

    • Description: enter an optional explanation for the refund for informational purposes. The tenant will see the word “Refund” on their lease ledger in the tenant portal.

    • Add Line Item: use this link to add additional refund items if needed. You could also create separate refunds for each line item.

    • Add memo: add an optional note for your reference when reviewing the credit later.

    Important for returning tenant overpayments:

    The toggle saying, “This is a refund for an overpayment (creates a charge to offset the overpayment)” is crucial for paying back tenant overpayments. Leave this toggled on if you are sending money back to a tenant after they paid you money that isn’t associated with any charge. If you are actually refunding a payment for a charge, un-toggle this option.

    To explain this a bit more, think of a refund as returning a payment for a charge that you’ve decided should no longer apply. A tenant may pay you late fees that later you decide not to charge, or you may have charged a full month’s rent when it should have been a prorated amount. The refund not only records that you sent the money back, but that the charge needs to be reduced by the amount of the refund.

    But what if a tenant accidentally pays you money they didn’t mean to? They might pay you a full month’s rent when you only charged them for a prorated amount, or they might just plain send you the wrong amount. You could keep the money as a credit on their lease to apply toward future charges. However, perhaps the tenant talked to you and really needs the money back. Because this was an overpayment, there is no lease charge to refund and the refund by itself won’t work to record the return of the overpayment.

    For the refund to work in DoorLoop, there has to be a charge associated with the money you are paying back to the tenant. No worries though, DoorLoop can automatically create this offsetting charge for you if you are creating a refund for an overpayment. That is what this toggle is for!

  5. Add any relevant files and click Save.

You’ve now processed a refund. Don’t worry about the accounting and reporting for the refund—DoorLoop will handle all that for you. For anything payment method other than ePay, you’ll need to now physically give the refund back to your Tenant whether it be cash, check, money order, or any other method.

If you selected ePay as your payment method and want to send them the refund electronically through your Checkbook.io account, move on to the next part of this tutorial.


Issuing the refund to your tenant electronically (ePay)

This step in the process is only necessary if you chose ePay as the payment method for the refund. If you also have Checkbook.io active, you’ll be able to send a payment to them electronically through DoorLoop. Learn more about Checkbook.io.

  1. From the main menu, click Accounting and then click Send Payments.

  2. Once on the Send Payments screen, you should see an entry in there from the refund you created before. Look at the Actions column and you should a link labeled Add Info. (You'll see this if you've never sent the tenant an Send Payment before). Click it.

  3. Here you’ll need to enable send payments for this tenant you are sending the refund to.

  4. Scroll down to the Email Settings portion and enter the tenant's Billing Email. This is where the eCheck will be sent.

  5. (optional) You can also enable Ask the payee for a PIN before accepting this payment. If you enable this, you’ll need to provide a PIN Code and a Hint that will give the payee an idea of what the PIN is.

  6. Click Save.

  7. Under the Actions column, you should now see a Send link. Click it.

  8. On the Payment popup, check to make sure all the information looks correct, and then click Confirm to send the payment.

That’s it. Your tenant will receive an email with the payment and they’ll have the option of either receiving the payment electronically through ACH or printing out a check and depositing it on their own.

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