Fully fixed fee utility bill 

This means that your building has a fixed utility fee for your tenants. 

When creating the rental agreement for the tenant you need to tick the ‘Contains utilities’ box. 

This way no utility invoices will be generated, but the unit will still participate in cost allocation unless it’s been excluded from the cost type calculation under ‘Unit information’.  This, also, opens an additional row ‘Utilities payment amount’. Please note that this field is strictly informative for you, it will not be added to the rent amount. If you wish to include utilities within the rent amount you need to enter the amount including utilities and rent in the ‘Rent amount’ field.  Do not tick ‘Generate utility invoice when contains utilities box as it is not applicable.   

If you wish to keep track of the actual expenses related to utilities you can add your received purchase invoices in the ‘Expenses’ section. 

Partially fixed fee utility bill

This means that your utilities are combined together under one fixed fee, but you want to bill some utilities (e.g. electricity, water) based on consumption. 

When creating the rental agreement for the tenant you need to tick the ‘Contains utilities’ box. This way no utility invoices will be generated, but the unit will still participate in cost allocation unless it’s been excluded from the cost type calculation under ‘Unit information’.  This, also, opens an additional row ‘Utilities payment amount’. Please note that this field is strictly informative for you, it will not be added to the rent amount. If you wish to include utilities within the rent amount you need to enter the amount including utilities and rent in the ‘Rent amount’ field. You also need to tick ‘Generate utility invoice when it contains utilities’ box. Ticking this box allows the unit still to participate in the cost allocation and create an invoice for the consumption based utilities.

Now in addition to this, you need to set up cost allocations for the consumption-based utilities. Let’s play this out by setting up a cost allocation for electricity. 

Go to ‘Invoices’ - ‘Cost allocation’. There click on the ‘New cost rule’ button on top of the screen. Then choose the building you are adding the cost allocation for. This takes you to the ‘Cost types’ page where you can add the different cost types. 

For this example let’s say you have different prices for night time and day time electricity. Additionally, you also want to share the cost of electricity in common spaces between all the apartments. This means you need to set up three cost types:

1. First, we need to add an upper-cost type (this will be the Common electricity). Click ‘Add cost type’
2. Fill out the required fields. Leave the ‘Upper cost type’ field empty. Descriptions of all the fields can be found here. When done click ‘Save’. 
3. Add the next cost type (daytime electricity) by clicking ‘Add cost type’
4. Fill out the required fields. Now find the previously added cost type (‘Common electricity’) under ‘Upper cost type’ and choose it. When done click ‘Save. 
5. Repeat steps 3. And 4. To add a third cost type (‘Night time electricity’). 

Now you’re all set up. Now you just need to add suppliers and purchase invoices. 

Setting up all the cost types from scratch

This means you are presenting all costs to the tenant based on the purchase invoices you receive. 

When creating the rental agreement for the tenant you need to leave the ‘Contains utilities’ box unticked.

Next, you need to set up cost allocations for all the costs. Let’s play this out by setting up a cost allocation for example for electricity and cleaning.

Go to ‘Invoices’ - ‘Cost allocation’. There click on the ‘New cost rule’ button on top of the screen. Then choose the building you are adding the cost allocation for. This takes you to the ‘Cost types’ page where you can add the different cost types. 

For this example let’s say you have different prices for night time and day time electricity. Additionally, you also want to share the cost of electricity in common spaces between all the apartments. This means you need to set up three cost types:

1. First, we need to add an upper-cost type (this will be the Common electricity). Click ‘Add cost type’
2. Fill out the required fields. Leave the ‘Upper cost type’ field empty. Descriptions of all the fields can be found here. When done click ‘Save’. 
3. Add the next cost type (daytime electricity) by clicking ‘Add cost type’
4. Fill out the required fields. Now find the previously added cost type (‘Common electricity’) under ‘Upper cost type’ and choose it. When done click ‘Save. 
5. Repeat steps 3. And 4. To add a third cost type (‘Night time electricity). 

To add cleaning costs you just need to add a new cost type for cleaning. Then fill out the fields correctly (link).  

When you’re all set up you just need to add suppliers and purchase invoices.