Overview
In order to make sure that your accounting data is correct, it is vital that you enter security deposits, prepaid rent, and any other liabilities you are already holding for your tenants.
This can be done during Step 3 of lease creation, however the following article will guide you through how to manually add deposits and apply appropriate credits on leases you already created in DoorLoop.
Note that because these deposits are already in one of your bank accounts, it is important to set up your bank account opening balances correctly to include these deposits.
The Steps
Create the Charge for the Deposit
In DoorLoop, the standard transaction flow on a lease is three steps: a charge, a payment, and then a bank deposit for that payment.
So first, we need to create a charge for the lease deposit.
From the main menu, click Leasing and then click Active Leases.
Find the lease you want to charge a deposit for and click on it. You can either sort the list by the various columns and filters or use the Search leases search bar.
Click on the Transactions tab and then the Post Charge button.
Enter the following information:
Account: choose the deposit liability account for the charge.
Description: enter an optional explanation for the deposit charge. What you enter here is what the tenant will see on their lease ledger in the tenant portal. If you leave it blank, the tenant will just see the word “Charge.” You will also see this description in the “Memo” column in relevant reports.
Amount: enter the amount for the deposit charge.
Due Date: change the due date for the deposit charge if needed.
Add note: add an optional note for your reference when reviewing the charge later.
Add any relevant files (optional) and click Save.
Next, we'll create the credit showing you are already holding the payment for this deposit in your bank accounts.
Create the Credit for the Paid Deposit
Now we need to record a payment for the deposit charge. In this case, the payment was already made and the deposit money is already in the bank, so we will create a credit instead of a lease payment.
From the lease transactions page, click on the Issue Credit button
Enter the following information on the Issue Credit window:
Date: Enter the date the tenant made the payment, which will be before your accounting start date and the opening balance date of your bank account.
If you don't remember the date of the payment for the deposit, that is ok, just guess as close as you can to have a date on record for your information.
Account: Choose the Opening Balance equity account, because this money is already in the opening balance you entered for your bank account.
Description: (Optional) Help make sure you recognize this credit in the future by entering something like "Security deposit already held."
Amount: Enter the amount of the deposit you already hold in your bank account.
This is likely equal to the charge, UNLESS your tenant hasn't paid their deposit in full and still needs to make additional payments on the deposit.
Click Save.
After saving, you can see the deposit held on the lease Overview page or the Deposits tab.
You may have noticed when reviewing the deposit on the Deposits tab that the date of the deposit payment is the day you actually created the lease credit. For example, if you created it today, it will show today's date.
This is because DoorLoop needs to account for when the credit was actually applied to the deposit charge for standard accounting purposes. We do this by creating a separate payment line item on the lease Transactions tab that ties the credit and the deposit charge together. The payment line item will be for $0.00, but if you click on that transaction, you'll see the deposit charge and credit listed together.
You can change the date of this $0.00 payment transaction line to match the date of the credit so you can see these transactions grouped together on the Transactions tab.
To do this go to the Transactions tab of the lease and click on the Applied Credit line that will say -- Split Values -- and have an amount of $0.00.
Change the Date field to match the date of the deposit credit, and then click Save.
Once you've completed these steps, the deposit will now show as being held as of this new date on the Deposits tab and in your reports.
Next Steps
While we don't recommend recording lease payments prior to your accounting start date in DoorLoop, you can use the same steps in this article for doing this.
In this case, the charges would be for a revenue account, not a deposit liability account.
These steps can also be used to record old payments and charges that have been accounted for in the opening balance.