Overview
When you give a tenant a credit on their lease for whatever reason, this credit applies toward an outstanding charge (or charges) on that lease, reducing the balance owed. Even though money didn't change hands at the time you record credits, the credits in effect "pay off" charges.
Considering that no money changes hands when credits are created, on what date do credits "pay off" charges? Furthermore, why are you not seeing an existing security deposit as being collected in the month you actually collected it?
This article will explain how this works for accounting and reporting purposes!
Credit and Cash vs. Accrual Accounting
If you record revenue at the time you collect the money (Cash Accounting), when credits apply to charges matters for your accounting and reporting purposes. This is because revenue isn't realized until you've actually recorded that you collected payment for a charge.
For the opposite method (Accrual Accounting), revenue is recorded as of the date you create the charge.
Credits and Payment Dates
In DoorLoop, creating a credit on a lease will automatically apply the credit toward the oldest charge on the lease ledger. If there is no charge currently, the credit will apply toward the next charge on the lease.
When a credit applies toward a charge, this creates a "credit applied" line on the Transactions tab of a lease for $0.00, which connects the credit to the charge. This is because DoorLoop needs to account for when the credit was actually applied to the charge for standard accounting purposes. Even though the payment is for $0.00, if you click on that transaction, you'll see the charge and credit listed together.
Note that even if you create a charge for a date in the past and a credit for a date in the past, the two became tied together today, when you actually created these transactions. This means that the date for the $0.00 "credit applied" line tying the two together will have today's date.
If at any point you edit either the charge or the credit, the $0.00 "credit applied" line will update to the day you make that edit, because you have in essence reapplied the credit to the charge with new information.
You can edit this $0 "credit applied" transaction to change the date to match the deposit charge and credit if you’d like to keep these organized together on the lease ledger.
The date of the $0.00 payment line tying together the credit and the charge is important because this is the date the credit will show on your reports if you use the Cash Accounting method.
In other words, the $0.00 "credit applied" line tying together the credit and the charge is the date the "payment" was collected for the charge.
What about the security deposit not showing in reports for the right date?
So you're looking at a property balance sheet and you don't see a security deposit you recorded a credit to the Opening Balance account for during a time period you should see it. Now what?
This is because even though you dated the charge and the credit correctly, the $0.00 "credit applied" line on the Transactions tab of that lease still has the date when you actually created or last edited the credit and/or charge.
You need to edit this $0.00 "credit applied" line (just click on it) and change the Date field to match the date of the deposit credit, then click Save.
This can be done for any credit that you created in DoorLoop that isn't showing up for the right dates in your report.