Once you've added a landlord in Alto, there are initial steps you can take to customise the settings on their contact record as needed, to ensure best practice.
The settings on a landlord record will determine:
- The delivery method used to send the landlord statement
- How a landlord is paid and to which bank account you will pay the rental income
- Your allowance to retain money if needed
- Your ability to attach supplier invoices to the landlord statement
- Your ability to change the landlords next statement number
- Your ability to record the landlords overseas tax and VAT status
- For landlords with multiple properties, the setting up of Payment Groups will determine if they get one statement with all rental income and one combined payment, or if they get one statement per property with individual payments per property
Best practice
In line with current HMRC guidelines, each landlord should have their own individual contact record. This will allow you to add each landlords individual NRL exemption details and will ensure that your HMRC reporting is as accurate as possible
Warning
It's important that your landlord records are set up correctly before entering Opening Balances or Accounts transactions onto Alto. Changes to settings after this will not be applied to existing transactions, only those created going forward
This article includes:
- Account delivery method for accounting documents
- Adding Landlord bank details
- Setting up Payment Groups
- Setting Landlord VAT status
- Landlord overseas tax settings
Account delivery method for accounting documents
- Click Contacts on the main toolbar
- Select the relevant contact (Landlord) from Recent & Favourite Contacts
- Alternatively, find the contact (Landlord) using the Search Contacts bar in the top right
- Click Contact on the side menu
- Scroll down to the Account Delivery Method section and tick the applicable delivery method(s)
- Click Save
Adding Landlord bank details
It's important to ensure bank details are added to landlord records to ensure payments can be processed successfully.
For more information on Adding landlord bank account details, click here.
Setting up Payment Groups
Payment Groups enable you to create separate statements for each property or group of properties that a landlord owns. It also keeps all income and expenditure separate for each group.
You can set up as many Payment Groups as is needed for each landlord.
For more information on Creating and managing payment groups, click here.
Setting Landlord VAT status
On the landlord record:
- Click Contact on the side menu
- Click the Tax top tab
- Change VAT Registered from Unknown to Yes or No
Note
If left as Unknown, Alto will assume that the landlord is VAT registered. An incorrect VAT status could affect the overseas tax calculation
Landlord overseas tax settings
If your landlord is overseas, you should ensure that you set their tax status before receipting any money.
For more information on Setting up an overseas landlord, including their tax settings, click here.