Management Commission > Penny Rounding Error

Management Commission → Penny rounding error

In COHO when payments are associated against a specific rent charge the management (managed properties only) commission fee is created for this specific amount associated. This allows great flexibility as your organisation will earn commissions as payments come in.

However, due to how numbers work this can in some rare cases introduce a rounding error putting the total commissions earned out by 1 penny. For most clients and managers this is not a problem, but there are cases where people are very meticulous and want to have all the commissions for a specific period add up to an exact amount.

Example Data

In our example below we have two payments, and we show their associated management fees (12% with VAT). The total rent paid is £500 between the two which would mean £60.00+VAT in management fees, however due to the rounding error only £59.99+VAT has been generated.

You need to open the rent due item (by clicking on the text View next to it) and find the section that says financial items, and load them.

Within that table we now see all the disbursements this rent due item will generate for the next settlement statement. If we add up the management fees we are out by 1 penny.

Solving this problem

The way to solve this in COHO is to manually add a ‘rounding penny’ charge. You do this by clicking on the “+ Financial Item” button in the quick add menu (part of the navigation).

Then fill in the form by copying these steps below

Step 1 →

The property, who earns the money, and which category

Step 2 →

The sub category, the direction of the money, and optionally linking the tenancy. I strongly recommend you do make the effort to link the tenancy.

Step 3 →

Add the charge of £0.01.

Step 4 →

Review the proposed item to be created and save it.

NOTE:
It says your organisation will earn the money, and hence it also indicates this item is an ‘Income’. It’s even pulled in the 12% commission that is set up for this property owner.

Confirming you have solved this problem

Part of any problem solving is testing your solution. Now that we have added the data we can get 100% confidence that this is resolved by testing the data we have added. Since this item is not linked to the rent due item we cannot see it on the tenancy page, instead we must go to the settlement creation form and review the data there.

Testing: Step 1 →

Visit home page (your organisation’s main page when you login) → Finances → Settlements → Find the specific property owner (it’s easy to search by property as shown below)

Testing: Step 2 →

Open the property owner by clicking View, and then click the create settlement button. You can choose ‘By Property’ and choose this specific property, and hit the preview button (leave all the other settings as they are).

If there are too many items shown you can filter by the specific tenant’s name as shown in this image.

Testing: Step 3 → Add up the values

If we add up £0.01, £8.34, and £63.65 we get £72.00 which is correct (£60+VAT). So now that we have confirmed this is all resolved we can sit back and have a cup of tea.