Overview
This tutorial is for those leases where the tenant is moving in at any time of the month other than the 1st. Instead of charging them a prorated amount for the first month, you are charging them a full amount of rent for the first month and then charging them the prorated rent for the second month. On the third month, the full amount of rent starts to post as normal for every month after that.
The Steps
There are a few ways you can account for prorated rent being charged in the second month instead of the first. For this method, we'll start off at the very beginning when you first create the lease.
To set up prorated rent charges when the first month is taken in full, click Leasing and then click Active Leases. (Alternatively, you can also create new leases from the Leases tabs of your properties and units.)
Click on the + New Lease button at the upper right of the display.
In the new Overview step, select the Property, the Unit, and then the Lease Terms.
The Lease terms should be set where the Start Date is the actual date they move in. (So if they move in on September 15th, for instance, you'd enter 09/15/2023.)
Click Next to move on and continue until you get to the Rent section.
On the Rent Charges section, since we have the tenant moving in on September 15, 2023, and they'll be paying the full first-month rent first and a prorated second month, we'll set the first month we are charging a full amount of rent for 2 months later, November 1, 2023.
DO NOT click the Prorated Charges for this example.
Click Next to continue.
Go through the rest of the New Lease wizard process as usual by going through the remaining steps to create the new lease.
Now that the lease is created, you should be on the lease's overview page. Click the Transactions tab. It should look fairly empty unless you added a charge to the security deposit. In any case, you'll want to use the Post Charge button and create a rent charge for 9/15/2023 for the full rent amount. It will look something like the below image.
When you do this, the balance due for the tenant will reflect that they owe the 1st-month full rent.
Next, you'll want to go to the Rent tab. At first, you should only see the one recurring rent schedule that we set to begin on 11/01/2023, which will be for the full amount of rent. That should not be changed and should be left alone. What we want to do here is create a new recurring rent charge for 10/01/2023 that will post for the prorated rent amount for the 2nd month.
Click the Recurring Rent button. We want to set the Start Date to be 10/01/2023 and the Account would be Rent and then enter the prorated amount in the Amount field. Click Save to finish.
So now what you should see are two recurring rent schedules. We do this so that the prorated amount for 10/01/2023 can be posted automatically instead of you posting it manually later on 10/01/2023. You'll also see that it ends on 10/31/2023.
That's because the full amount for rent will then post on 11/01/2023.
That's it. To recap, setting it up like this would show the following:
The start date is 09/01/2023, and the full amount of rent has already been posted to the lease.
On 10/01/2023, a prorated amount for rent will be posted automatically.
On 11/01/2023, full rent will start to be charged and will be posted every month after for the full amount.
Note that you don't need to create that recurring charge for the prorated rent if you don't want to, but you will need to post that charge manually on the month it is due.