Keeping track of outstanding tenant balances across a growing portfolio of rental properties can be a huge hassle. Partial months, utility pass-throughs, late charges, credits for repairs, and other funkiness have been known to break even the best of spreadsheets. That's why we built a powerful tenant ledger feature to track every charge and every payment in one place.

Click a tenant's name on your Leases & Tenants page to access the tenant ledger for any specific tenancy. When the tenancy details appear, simply scroll down to the section titled, "Current Balance." This is your tenant ledger.

The tenant ledger feature is designed to be as friction-free as possible. Generally speaking, neither monthly rent charges nor rent payments received need to be entered directly into the ledger.

Monthly rent charges are automatically added to the ledger on the first day of every month when you've set up valid lease dates and rents under "Rent History."

Payments appear on the tenant ledger whenever a line item from the Transactions page is categorized as "Income" and assigned to a Unit/Tenancy combo.

When you get in the habit of keeping your rent roll and transactions up to date, your tenant ledger fills in with no additional effort.

If a recurring monthly rent charge is missing, double-check your lease dates under "Rent History," located above and to the right of the tenant ledger. Similarly, if a payment you've received is not showing up, locate the Income item on your Transactions page and make sure it's assigned to the proper Unit and Tenancy.

If you want to exclude a prior time from the tenant ledger, just click More on the far right of the ledger and then "Adjust Balance" and set a custom start date for the ledger. This allows you to ignore older months/years of a tenancy, for which you may not have imported all the actual rental payments.

Adjusting the balance can be done in a few ways:

Since the Transactions page only tracks actual income and expenses, it's not obvious how to input other one-off tenant charges. Maybe you have a tenant that reimburses you for actual utility expenses every month. You want to track the charge in advance of the payment. To do this, simply click the "Add a Charge" button at the top right of the tenant ledger to create a tenant charge. When the tenant makes payment, simply assign the Income item to the tenancy via your Transactions page. Voilà, you'll now see both the original charge and the new payment on your tenant ledger.

You can also create a tenant credit if you need to write off a balance or otherwise reimburse a tenant out of other payments you've already received. To do this, just click the "Credit" in the Add Charge pop up.
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You may also notice a "Record a Payment" button on your tenant ledger. This is merely a shortcut to the Transactions page, where you can add a transaction manually as needed. If you're using Stessa as it's designed, this should be a rare occurrence. You'll save time and hassle when all of your transactions are piped in via direct bank connections or QIF file uploads. Manual transactions should only be used as a last resort!

Most tenant ledger issues are related to:

1) Missing rent payments from the early days of a lease or tenancy

2) Income transactions that have not been assigned to the proper tenancy

3) Missing tenant ledger charges for things like utilities, pet deposits, etc.

If you've checked all the usual suspects and something still doesn't add up, visit the Community Forum or use the blue circle (web) or Support & Help option (mobile) to open a conversation with the Success team.

Watch our quick video on reviewing your tenant ledger for Rent Collection below.