Creating and managing 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.

Payment Groups are set up for the following reasons:

• If the landlord wishes to have separate statements and payments per property, or per group of properties
• If you wish to retain any of the landlord income i.e. maintenance float
• To identify how the landlord is to be paid and which bank account payment is to be made to
• To change the next statement number
• To attach suppliers invoices to the landlord statement
• If a landlord has old properties that the agent no longer manages for them, an archive payment group is set up. The old properties are moved into this group

This article includes: 

• Consideration points
• Creating a Payment Group
• Moving properties between Payment Groups
• Default Payment Group Settings

Consideration points

Initially, all properties will be assigned to one Default Payment Group. (This will generate one statement and one payment for all properties in the Default Payment Group.)

Creating a Payment Group

1. Click Contacts on the main toolbar
2. Select the relevant landlord from Recent & Favourite Contacts
   1. Alternatively, find the landlord using the Search Contacts bar in the top right
3. Click Contact on the side menu
4. Click the Payment Groups top tab. If the landlord has multiple properties, they will all show in the Default Payment Group
5. Click Create Payment Group 
6. The Configure Payment Group window opens
   1. In Group Name, type the name of the payment group. It's a good idea to call it the same name as the property or block so you recognise the payment group when creating a landlord statement
   2. In Retention Target, add the amount of money you intend to hold, i.e. if you retain a maintenance float
   3. Select the Payment Method from the dropdown menu
   4. For Payment To, if paying by BACS, you need to select which bank account the payment is to be made to. If you fail to complete both of these steps, the BACS process will state you have insufficient details when processing your BACS payments
   5. From the Statement Remark dropdown menu, select your default statement remark
   6. Confirm/change the Next Statement Number if needed
   7. Confirm via the Attach Supplier Invoices tick box if you want suppliers invoices uploaded into Alto to be attached to statements 
7. Click Save

Moving properties between Payment Groups

To view properties in a Payment Group:

1. Click the red downward arrow in the centre of the line to view properties in the current Payment Group
2. Click Move on the property you wish to move
3. On the popup box, click Select on the payment group you wish to move the property to. It will then change to Selected
4. Click Move to confirm

All accounting transactions for these properties will now be on separate statements. You'll be able to see them separately on the Landlords To Pay screen.

If you wish to edit or rename the Payment Group, click the grey cog to the right of the individual Payment Group. 

Default Payment Group Settings

1. Click the grey cog next to the Default Payment Group
2. The Configure Payment Group window opens
   1. Change the Group Name, i.e. to the property address
   2. Follow the process as stated above in Creating a Payment Group

Related articles: 

Adding landlord bank account details

Initial settings on a landlord