Expense instalment templates help property managers efficiently handle large expenses that need to be paid over multiple periods, such as council rates, insurance premiums, or maintenance contracts. Instead of manually creating separate invoices for each payment, you can set up a single template that automatically generates invoices according to your specified schedule.
Key Benefits
Expense instalments streamline your workflow by automatically generating invoices based on predefined schedules, ensuring consistent payment tracking and reducing manual data entry. The system calculates individual instalment amounts, tracks coverage periods, and maintains complete audit trails for all generated invoices. This feature is particularly valuable for managing recurring expenses like council rates, insurance premiums, or service contracts that are paid in multiple instalments throughout the year.
Configuring Instalment Invoice Settings
Before creating instalment templates, you'll want to configure how attachments are handled on the generated invoices. This setting gives you control over whether supporting documents from your template appear on each invoice.
Setting Up Attachment Preferences
To configure how attachments are included on instalment invoices:
- Navigate to Settings > Manage companies
- Select the Company and scroll down to the Invoicing section
- Locate the Instalment Invoices section
- Choose your preference for attachment handling:
- Should not be attached to the invoice: Supporting documents from the template won't appear on generated invoices
- Should also be attached to the invoice: Any attachments from the template will automatically be included on each generated invoice
- Scroll to the end of the page and click Save to apply your changes
This setting applies to all instalment templates in your company and determines whether documents like contracts, quotes, or approval forms attached to your template will automatically transfer to the individual expense invoices.
Creating an Expense Instalment Template
To create a new expense instalment template, navigate to Income & Expenses and click the Expense Instalments tab. From this page, click the Create instalment template button to open the template creation form.
Invoice Details Configuration
Begin by setting up the basic invoice information in the Invoice details section. Select your Company from the dropdown, choose the appropriate Property and related Tenancy/Area if applicable. Set the Invoice status to determine how invoices will be generated - options include Draft, Awaiting approval, or Approved. Select the creditor in the From field and choose the appropriate Ledger or Tracking Categories for expense tracking.
Enter a clear Description that will help identify this expense series, and choose your preferred PDF template for invoice formatting.
Payment Details Setup
In the Payment details section, enter your Reference number and configure the financial settings. Set whether Amounts are GST exclusive or inclusive, select the appropriate Account for expense categorization, and choose the correct Tax type for tax calculations.
Instalment Configuration
The Instalments section is where you define your payment schedule. Enter the Number of instalments you need, and the system will automatically create rows for each instalment. Choose how invoices should be generated using the Generate invoices dropdown - you can generate them in advance or on the due date.
UK customers have the option to choose not to generate invoices at all if they wish to use the Owner Payments feature which can generate pro-rated expense invoices based on the property/area vacancy for the coverage period.
For each instalment row, you can specify the Instalment amount, Due date, and coverage periods with Period start and Period end dates.
Managing Existing Templates
The Expense Instalments list view displays all your templates in a tabular format showing Property, Creditor, Description, Reference, Number of Instalments, and Total Amount. You can filter templates by property management company or property manager using the dropdown filters, and use the search box to find specific templates by keywords.
Click the edit icon next to any template to open and edit the template details. Once invoices have been generated from a template, those specific instalment rows become read-only and display links to the generated invoices.
Automated Invoice Generation
The system automatically generates expense invoices based on your template configuration. Invoices are created according to the timing you specified - either on the due date, in advance by your specified interval, or not at all if you chose the "Don't generate" option.
Generated invoices inherit all details from your template including company, property, tenancy, contact information, PDF template, invoice status, and financial settings. The description field automatically includes the coverage period dates when specified, or adds "- instalment [#]" notation for numbered instalments.
Template Management
You can save templates at any time using the Save button, or use Archive to remove templates that are no longer needed. The Cancel button allows you to exit without saving changes.
Templates with future instalment dates can be modified until those specific instalments generate invoices. Once an invoice is created from an instalment, that particular instalment becomes read-only, but you can still modify future instalments or add new ones to extend the payment schedule.
Document Management
Expense instalment templates support document uploads, allowing you to attach supporting documentation like contracts, rate notices, or other relevant files. The built-in PDF viewer lets you reference uploaded documents while configuring your template, ensuring all payment details are accurately captured from source documents.
This feature is particularly useful when working with complex documents like council rate notices that contain multiple payment options and coverage periods, as you can reference the original document while setting up your instalment schedule.
Automatically Generate Tenant On-charge Invoices
When you create expense instalments for a tenancy, you can configure the template to automatically generate corresponding tenant income invoices for cost recovery. This eliminates the need to manually create individual invoices to recoup expenses from tenants.
How On-charge Invoices Work
When enabled, Re-Leased creates one tenant income invoice for each expense instalment invoice. The system copies the line description, amount, tax type, and ledger/tracking categories from the expense instalment to the tenant invoice, ensuring consistent record-keeping across both expense and income transactions.
Configuring On-charge Invoices
The On-charge invoice section appears in the instalment template form when you select a tenancy. This section remains hidden until a tenancy is chosen since on-charging only applies to tenant-related expenses.
To enable on-charging:
- Select a Tenancy for the instalment template.
- In the On-charge invoice section that appears, toggle the on-charge option to On.
- Configure the following settings:
- Invoice status - Choose whether the generated tenant invoices should be created as Approved or Awaiting Approval.
- Chart of account - Select the income account for the tenant invoices.
- Due date - Set when the tenant invoices become due. You can configure this as a specific number of days, weeks, or months from the invoice date.
- Include all attached documents - Enable this checkbox to copy any documents attached to the expense invoice onto the corresponding tenant income invoice.
Hold Expense Invoice Option
When the expense invoice status is set to Awaiting Approval, an additional option appears: Hold expense invoice until on-charge has been paid. This prevents the expense invoice from being processed until the tenant has paid the corresponding on-charge invoice.
This option is hidden when expense invoices are set to Approved status, since approved invoices process immediately.
When On-charging Is Not Available
The on-charge option is disabled in the following situations:
- Generate invoices set to "Do not generate" - On-charging requires expense invoices to be created. If you've configured the template to not generate expense invoices, the on-charge toggle will be disabled with a tooltip explaining this requirement.
- Invoice status set to "Draft" - On-charging is not available for draft expenses. The toggle will be disabled with a tooltip indicating this limitation.
- No tenancy selected - The on-charge section only appears when a tenancy is selected for the instalment template.
Viewing Related On-charge Invoices
After expense instalment invoices are generated with on-charging enabled, you can navigate between the expense and income invoices. On the expense invoice page, open the actions menu and select See on-charge to view the corresponding tenant income invoice.