Recording Gas and Electricity Bills in Landlord Vision

Energy bills are a big topic at the moment, especially as they keep going up and up.  While we can’t help you pay them off, we can help you with recording these costs, and also the money you collect from your tenants to cover these bills.

Recording Gas and Electricity Expenses

There are different ways of recording expenses in Landlord Vision:

Repeating Utility Expenses

Simply tell the software to raise an expense every month – or every three months depending on how often the payments are taken. Go to Property Manager > Expense > Add Repeating Expense and the software will raise an expense for the same amount for the same supplier every month, or quarter.

Fixed Payments, Variable Bills

Many people are on tariffs that allow them to pay the same payment every month, then receive bills that vary throughout the year. In late summer they will be in credit, in late winter they won’t be. If this is you and you want to track this, you can do this in the software. Let’s say you are paying Smart Energy Co. £250 every month. Record payments as follows in Property Manager > Payments > Expenses Payments:

March £250
April £250
May £250
June £250
July £250

Then record the bills as they come in under Property Manager > Expenses:

March £345.98
April £327.52
May £306.39
June £251.41
July £191.75

Then allocate the payments to the expenses:

You can then use the Summary of Payments on the Property Manager > Expenses page to see where you are up to based on the bills that you have received and the payments you have made. Filter by the Supplier and then click Show Summary of Payments right at the bottom of the page:

Charging Tenants for Bills

If you charge your tenants for the utility bills in addition to their rent, you can raise charge invoices to track these collections. Head to Tenant Manager > Invoices > Add Repeating Invoice and record the amount you are charging the tenant and how often.  Landlord Vision will raise a charge invoice each time which you can allocate payments to.

You can track these on the tenant’s Statement of Account.