Unpaid tenants

Hi,

This is an interesting problem! One idea I have would be to use the memorized transactions feature for all the invoices you need to create. When you view your memorized transaction list, you can choose the column "Next Date" to view the next date the invoice needs to be created. You can sort that list by date and see which invoices have not been created, thereby seeing which tenants have not paid you. I've attached one of my lists as an example. 

I would imagine there is another solution out there. May I ask, how have you been managing this since you started using QB? 

Victoria

I don't invoice my residential tenants. What I've been doing is just seeing who paid and then manually go through my doors to see who hasn't paid. Occasionally I miss one, which is why I'm trying to figure out how to design a report that captures all the unpaid tenants. I wouldn't mind capturing all tenants, including the unpaid tenants. 

As I stated, Peachtree would allow me to design a report by picking tenants in the report. I'd save it and simply update the time from month to month to get the report. Since it would show all tenants, including the ones who hadn't paid, I'd have to scan through it. Compared to what I do now, that is not a problem as far as I'm concerned. 

In an aside, I do have a small storage facility, I do invoice and email them their invoice, but that is mostly because the tenants easily forget to pay their storage fees.  This is done as a reminder for them. 

Thanks for your response. I hope this clarifies my issue and helps in finding a way to solve my problem. 

Oops! I forgot to mention, I can't memorize transactions. Tenants don't always pay on the same day, or even the same amounts. While rent is due on the first, some actually pay a week ahead of time, or a day or two tardy. It just becomes impossible to memorize the transaction. 

Based on the way you are using QB, you could run a report for the current period and customize it to include "previous period" or "previous year". Assuming everyone paid in the previous period or year, a column for the current period would show zero. 

The report you run depends on how you are recording the payments from your tenants.

I appreciate the complete details, @neyerbj.

Let me share with you information on how you can maximize the use of QuickBooks in managing your rental business.

First, you'd want to make sure to properly set up your tenants and vendors. 

Once added, you'd want to set up the correct accounts and service items you use in tracking your transactions (i.e Tenant payments, Late Fees, Deposits, Utilities and etc.)

Now, you can record your tenants' rent in two ways. 

• Create an invoice if you receive payments at a later date. 
  • You can use QuickBooks’ finance charge feature to calculate and add the late fees to their invoices. This is applicable if you're using QuickBooks Enterprise.
• Use sales receipts if you receive their payments right away.

By following the steps above, you can be sure that you'll be able to generate and customize the Transactions List by Customer report or the A/R Aging Detail report. This way, you can easily view which tenant was not able to pay you on-time.

Always feel free to visit us here again if you have other questions managing your tenant-related transactions. I'm always here to help.

The problem with that is it assumes the tenants I have now are the same I had in the previous year, even the previous month. This is a false assumption. In addition I can't memorize the transaction as it can differ month to month by date and amount.

I don't use QB Enterprise, so that option is out. 

What you're suggesting is a convoluted way of taking a payment. Someone should be able to come in, pay their rent and I should be able to receive it without having to do a bunch of stuff, other than issuing them a receipt for their payment. 

If I was going to invoice the tenants, regardless of whether I sent them the invoice or not, I could just look up what invoices were still pending without a lot of convoluted transactions. However, as I mentioned earlier, I don't know what to invoice them until they can pay their rent. 

What ever they pay, rent, late fees, even damages, it is recorded as rental income. I don't know what they are going to pay, until it's paid. Trying to separate them into different accounts complicates determining the income for each property which is required for the Schedule E.

QB ought to be able to look at my choice of income accounts and return which have had activity and which haven't, for a given period of time.

The tenants may change but the "doors" you manually check stay the same.  I would set up each unit as a customer so regardless of who the tenant is, the customer name in QB stays the same. You would then be able to compare who paid and who didn't. 

I've tried selecting the tenants, but only get those that have paid, how would this differ?