Managing & Reporting Property Reserves

A reserve is typically held by a property manager to pay for unexpected expenses to a property during the term of management. 

The reserve is either paid for by the owner in advance (owner contribution) or taken from the rental income prior to the owner distribution.

If the reserve amount is paid for by the owner in advance, you'll want to post the amount received from the owner to the property as an owner contribution. 

Learn more about Owner Contributions

Holding a Property Reserve

Rentec Direct software supports holding reserves at the property level. You can either enable and add the reserve dollar amount when you first add a property or use the following steps. 

In your Rentec Direct account: 

1. Click on Properties
2. Right-click a Property and choose Edit Property 
3. Under Financial, check the Property Reserve checkbox and enter the dollar amount to hold. 
   
4. Click on Update Property 

Important Notes: 

• For Multi-Unit properties, you can apply a reserve to each subunit and/or Primary Unit. 
• After reserves have been entered, the reserve will be reflected on the Owner Statement

Displaying a Property Reserve

You have the option to configure your settings to reflect the reserve in the property's rolling balance so you can see that information at a glance when viewing your properties list. 

In your Rentec Direct account:

1. Click on Settings
2. Under Financial, click on Accounting Defaults
3. Choose YES for Show reserve calculation on the properties and owners tab? 
   
   
4. Click on Save Changes 

Enabling this option will cause the application to automatically calculate the property and owner balances and show a secondary figure subtracting the reserve.

• For a property, it will simply subtract the reserve from the balance.
• For an owner, it will add up all the reserves for properties owned by that owner and subtract the total reserves from their balance.

How to Release a Reserve

Reserves can quickly be released and made available through an owner disbursement.

In your Rentec Direct account: 

1. Click on Properties
2. Right-click on the property and choose Edit Property 
3. Under Financial, uncheck Property Reserve
4. Click on Update Property 

Now the funds previously held as a reserve, will be available the next time you  Pay Owner Disbursements