Receipting unknown monies; i.e. suspense amounts

The steps below outline how you can receipt and reconcile monies into your client account that you have not yet been able to identify; i.e. you have insufficient information to be able to record the receipt against the appropriate tenancy.

How to prepare Alto to receive suspense amounts

To prepare Alto to receive unknown monies, you will need to create a dummy landlord account:

1. Click Contacts on the main navigation bar
2. Click Add Contact
3. The Type of record needs to be set to Client
4. Change the Intention to Not looking
5. A Deactivating Requirement Profiles? message appears. Click Yes to confirm that you would like to deactivate the requirement profile
6. Within the First Person section, enter the Name: Mx Suspense Account (no correspondence details are required)
7. In the Address section, click Enter manually. Enter any address you wish (it's not going to matter) using the Postcode finder to set the address, or manually enter the property address
8. Click Save

You'll now need to create a dummy 'to let' property and attach it to the dummy landlord:

1. Click Properties on the main navigation bar
2. Click Add a Market Appraisal or Property
3. The Add a Property page opens. Within the Find an existing contact field, enter the name you created earlier, i.e. Mx Suspense Account. Then, click Search contacts
4. Select the relevant contact from the list below, and click Use selected contact
5. Now, click Add property manually
6. Enter any address you wish (it's not going to matter) - we advise only using the Name/No and Street fields, i.e. 1 Suspense Road
7. Ensure the Market is set as To Let
8. Click Save property
9. Click Finish

How to add a suspense amount

To receipt unknown monies, we are going to add a retained sum to our dummy landlords account:

1. Click Accounts on the main navigation bar
2. Click Opening Balances on the side menu
3. Click the Client Accounts top tab
4. Click View on the relevant client account
5. Change the Default Date to the date of the receipt (if different)
6. In the dropdown menu, click Landlord Retention
7. Find the suspense landlord using the Search Landlords bar, then click Add
8. The Add Retention window opens. Enter the amount received, then click OK
9. If you are prompted that "A transaction for the same value has previously been posted. Do you wish to continue?", click Yes
10. Enter the same number into the Target Amount
11. Click Post Bank Balances

When you next go to perform a bank reconciliation, you will see an entry corresponding to the transaction above and will thus be able to reconcile this to achieve the correct closing bank balance in Alto.

How to resolve an identified suspense amount

Once the source of the funds has been correctly identified, you can negate the previous receipt and 'move' it to the appropriate tenancy:

1. Click Accounts on the main navigation bar
2. Click Opening Balances on the side menu
3. Click the Client Accounts top tab
4. Click View on the relevant client account
5. Change the Default Date to the date of the receipt
6. In the dropdown menu, click Landlord Retention
7. Find the suspense landlord using the Search Landlords bar, then click Add
8. The Add Retention window opens. Enter the amount received again but this time precede the number with a minus to denote a negative amount. Then, click OK
9. If you are prompted that "A transaction for the same value has previously been posted. Do you wish to continue?", click Yes
10. In the dropdown menu, change Landlord Retention to Tenancy
11. Find the tenancy for the receipt using the Search Tenancies bar, then click Add
12. Select the type of Charge Item, i.e. Landlord Income - Rent
13. Change the Description to something more appropriate
14. Enter the Net Amount, this time as a positive number
15. Click OK
16. Click Post Bank Balances

By doing this, you have reversed the receipt you'd previously recorded on the dummy landlords account and added the sum instead to the tenancy account where it belongs.

On your bank reconciliation screen, you will now see these two transactions (which cancel each other out) to reconcile when you carry out your next bank reconciliation.