All Collections
Leasing
Leasing Scenarios
How to Account for Section 8 Payments
How to Account for Section 8 Payments

How to handle housing authority payments on your tenants leases.

Nika avatar
Written by Nika
Updated over a week ago

Overview

You might have tenants who get rental assistance from a housing authority or Section 8 voucher. How should you record these payments on your leases? You have several options, depending on what you want the tenant to see in their tenant portal.



Tenants see what they owe, and can view Section 8 payments

  1. For leases that involve Section 8 payments, you'll want to move-in a new tenant to that lease called Section 8. To do this, find the Section 8 lease and click the Tenants tab on the lease. Then click the Move-in button and add Section 8 as a tenant.

  2. You can then add a recurring payment on the tenant's lease for the amount that Section 8 pays.

    • (You could set this payment to post around the 28th of each month, or anytime BEFORE the rent charge posts).

  3. This will create a credit on the tenant's lease and when their rent charge posts on the 1st, that credit will be applied automatically to it. The balance left is what the tenant will see, which is the amount that the tenant will need to pay on their tenant portal.

  4. If the Section 8 payment arrives on a date that is not the same as the date you set the recurring payment for, you can always go back into the lease and edit the payment date to reflect when the actual Section 8 payment was received.


Tenants can only see what they owe

  1. Adjust the recurring rent amount to the amount that the tenant needs to pay.

  2. Record Section 8 payments as a bank deposit to the rent account for the property.


My tenant doesn't pay online and I don't track separate payments

  1. Leave the recurring rent amount as is.

  2. Record full lease payments from the existing tenant if you have no need to track Section 8 payments separately.

Did this answer your question?