Rents calendar management overview
All rents charges and payment schedules are controlled through the creation of one or more calendars. The precise number of calendars available is at the discretion of the housing organisation but as a minimum a separate calendar must exist for each individual company. The calendar defines the start and end point for each period in which all rent activities take place. As part of the calendar configuration process, each must be linked to a charging frequency - daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc. - and a financial year. Once the start date and required number of periods is specified for the calendar, the end date is automatically derived. A housing organisation can also choose to incorporate free periods within the calendar structure, whether that be to uphold historical rent collection holiday observance (e.g. the period between Christmas and New Year) or to alleviate pressure during the most acutely busy periods e.g. financial year end. Once a free period has been set, no charges will be raised during that time.
The financial year can be set to commence at any point and is not fixed to 1st April, although it is recognised that for many housing organisations the accounting periods will mirror those of the tax year. System configuration settings enable the end user to display the desired component of the financial year. So, for example, the year 1st April 2014 - 31st March 2015 could be displayed as either '2014' or '2015' to match local convention. Once set, each successive accounting period is denoted by a suffix of that year. Hence, extending the same example, period 1 would therefore be displayed as, say, 2015_1.
Any number of accounting periods can remain open at the same time, with payments and charges being allocated to the correct period by virtue of the transaction date. To uphold system integrity, each payment is stored with both a transaction date and posted date but only the transaction date is used to derive the correct period. Advancing to the next period and closure of previous periods is controlled entirely by the end user. Typically an end user would close periods promptly once all payments have been received, but there may be circumstances where it is more practicable for the period to remain open e.g. across the financial year end, awaiting an expected housing benefit payment (received in arrears) for the closing year. Once a period is closed, any subsequent transactions equating to that period will be posted into the current period, irrespective of any other interim periods that remain open. The system will permit an end user with appropriate security permissions to re-open a closed period, although this action should only be undertaken with caution, as any reported figures could change as a result of subsequent postings.
During initial set-up, the system will also permit the creation of previous financial years, enabling housing organisations to enter historical transactions and closing balances - particularly useful during the initial implementation phase or within a defined period of parallel running.
Interfacing is supported between Civica Cx Housing and third party financial accounting systems for the transfer of all relevant transactional events. To ensure that exported transactional data arising from rent charges and payments corresponds to the correct financial period within the nominated accounting system, it is necessary to map one period structure to the other. This is achieved within the rent calendar, where each active period can be assigned an equivalent ledger period number.
Separate help articles have been created for each key aspect of rents calendar management, including: