Rents charge element maintenance overview
A rent charge can be a single value, or it can comprise a number of related components; hence a group charge is formed, consisting of several elemental values. Therefore when adding a charge to the rent price list of an asset, all the associated elements are automatically transferred, ensuring both consistency and administrative efficiency. For example, a charge could be created for 'Weekly Rent' which might comprise three element charges: 'Basic Rent', 'Heating' and 'Services'. The 'Weekly Rent' will be displayed as a single overall total, but with the opportunity to analyse the components from which that figure is derived. To ensure that element charges are allocated correctly, configuration settings control several characteristics concerning their deployment: classification (Property Charge or Account Charge), applicable account types and applicable agreement types are all user defined for each element record. To uphold tenant agreement policies, parameters are assigned to each element to set the required notice period for any proposed changes, both in terms of adding the element to an agreement as a new charge or where an increase to an existing charge is applied. Element charges are seen as the lowest common denominator for the rent review process, with the end user controlling the scheduled review dates for each element to ensure they are encapsulated within the correct review model. There is no limit to the number of charge elements that can be maintained on the system, and their availability and inclusion within tenant agreements is controlled by the assigned 'effective' dates. As the desired subset of elements for each charge might be quite similar, with only minimal attribute changes (e.g. charging frequency), it is possible to 'clone' (copy) a record and adjust only those attributes that differ.
Separate help articles have been created for each key aspect of rents charge element maintenance, including: