Real estate cashflow brings together the financial activity allocated to one Real Estate reporting line. The source of an entry may be an ordinary bank or transactional account, a property expense account or a guest/tenant deposit account. Worthic converts qualifying entries into property transaction lines and uses their categories and economic purpose to determine how they affect property cashflow.
Sources of property transactions
A management-enabled property can receive property transaction lines from:
- Linked transactional accounts — ordinary receipts and payments recorded in bank, card or other transaction accounts used by the property.
- Property expense account — an optional, separate non-bank ledger used to track money and expenses administered by a managing or letting agent.
- Guest or tenant deposit account — an optional liability ledger used to track deposits received, held, refunded, retained or adjusted for guests or tenants.
These sources remain separate accounts with their own balances and histories, but their qualifying entries are combined in Property transactions and property reporting. The source identifies where the entry was recorded; the Real Estate reporting line identifies the property; and the category determines its cashflow treatment.
Allocating transactional-account activity
Before an ordinary transactional account can be used by a property, link it under Settings → Reporting lines → Real Estate → Edit Real Estate reporting lines → Transactional accounts, or add the real estate reporting line as an account user in the account's settings. The same transactional account may be available to more than one reporting line.
Transactions can be allocated to a property in several ways:
- Select the property in the Reporting line field when creating or editing a transaction.
- Review or change the suggested reporting line during statement or document import.
- If an account is linked to only one reporting line, Worthic can assign that line automatically.
- For shared accounts, Worthic can use confirmed history and learned allocation rules. Ambiguous entries remain available for review.
- Split a transaction when one bank entry belongs to several properties, reporting lines or categories. Each component receives its own reporting line, amount, date, description and category, and the components must equal the original transaction total.
The account link determines which reporting lines may use an account. The reporting line recorded against the transaction determines which property receives the transaction.
Categories are equally important. Worthic uses them to place property transaction lines under gross rental income, commissions, other direct costs, operating expenses, interest, loan principal, capital expenditure or transfers.
Property expense account
The property expense account is an optional agent-managed non-bank ledger. It is intended for money and property expenses administered outside the owner’s ordinary bank accounts—for example, funds held by a letting agent and expenses paid from those funds.
Creating the expense account
For a management-enabled property:
1. Go to Settings → Reporting lines → Real Estate.
2. Add or edit the required reporting line.
3. Under Managed accounts, select Add next to Property expense account.
4. Enter the optional managing agent or provider.
5. Choose the opening-balance method. You can enter a manual opening balance and as-of date or use the earliest imported expense-account statement.
6. Save the account or reporting line.
The account is created only when the setup is saved. Its name is system-defined as “[Real Estate reporting line] expense account”. The name, currency, property link and ownership cannot be edited independently. The currency is inherited from the property’s reporting currency, and ownership attribution is inherited from the Real Estate reporting line.
Managing the expense account
Once active, Add changes to Manage. Manage opens the specialised account settings, where you can review the fixed account details, update the managing agent/provider, maintain the appropriate opening-balance settings or disable the account.
The modal does not contain generic account settings such as account users, editable ownership, forecasts, cash-return assumptions, account type, account identifier or currency changes. The account belongs exclusively to its property; access follows access to that Real Estate reporting line.
Disabling requires confirmation. It hides the expense-account table and stops new managed-ledger activity, but preserves the account ID, balance, transactions and documents. Re-enable restores the same ledger and history rather than creating another account.
Using the expense account
Transactions can be added directly from the property page or imported from an expense-account statement. They are assigned to the property automatically and flow into Property transactions. Categorized entries affect the appropriate direct-cost, operating-expense, finance or capital category.
When money moves between a linked bank account and the expense account, Worthic records the related entries as an inter-account transfer. The movement changes the two account balances but is not additional income or a second expense.
While active, the property page displays the expense-account table, including entries and running balances. If the account has never been added or is disabled, the table is not shown.
Guest or tenant deposit account
The deposit account is an optional managed non-bank liability ledger. It is available for both property types:
- Short-term rental — Guest deposit account.
- Long-term rental — Tenant deposit account.
Creating the deposit account
For a management-enabled property:
1. Open Settings → Reporting lines → Real Estate.
2. Add or edit the property.
3. Under Managed accounts, select Add next to Guest deposit account or Tenant deposit account.
4. Enter an Institution if applicable. This field is optional.
5. Save the account or reporting line.
Worthic creates “[Real Estate reporting line] guest deposit account” or “[Real Estate reporting line] tenant deposit account”. If the property type changes, the existing ledger and history are retained and the system-defined name is updated.
The account’s property, liability-ledger type, currency and ownership attribution are read-only. Its currency comes from the property.
Deposit opening balances are not entered as one generic account balance. Use the Opening balance action in the active deposit table so each amount can be associated with the relevant guest or tenant and the total liability remains reconcilable to individual deposit holders.
Managing the deposit account
When active, select Manage from the reporting line’s Managed accounts section to review its fixed details, update Institution or disable it. Generic ownership, account-user, forecast, amortization, identifier and currency settings are not shown.
Disabling requires confirmation and warns that deposit liabilities may remain outstanding. The ledger table is hidden and new managed entries stop, but its balances, deposits, transactions, documents and account ID are preserved. Re-enable restores the existing ledger.
Deposit activity
Deposit entries may be created from allocated bank transactions, detailed rental-receipt allocations or deposit adjustments. They can include:
- deposits received;
- deposits refunded;
- guest- or tenant-specific opening balances;
- amounts retained for damage; and
- interest accrued on deposits.
These entries are visible in Property transactions, but not every deposit entry is income or expenditure. A deposit received creates or increases a liability; it is not rental income. A refund reduces that liability; it is not an operating expense. A retained amount or interest entry is classified according to its actual economic purpose and may affect income or expenditure where appropriate.
While the ledger is active, its table shows entries and running balances and can be filtered by guest or tenant. If the account has not been added or is disabled, the table is not displayed.
Detailed rental receipts and transfers
A net rental receipt may contain several economic components. Worthic’s detailed allocation workflow can separate it into rental charged, additional charges, commission, other direct costs, expense deductions, deposits and transfers to the expense account.
This preserves gross rental income and underlying costs instead of reporting only the amount deposited into the bank. Deposit and expense-account components are linked to their managed ledgers where those accounts are active. Corresponding property transaction lines feed the appropriate reports, while linked transfers are excluded from income and expenditure totals.
If a managed account has not been added, Worthic can still classify the relevant property transaction component, but it cannot maintain or reconcile the corresponding managed subledger.
Foreign currency
If an entry’s currency differs from the property reporting currency, Worthic converts it using the applicable transaction-date exchange rate. An FX override can be used where a statement or supporting document supplies the actual rate.
Monthly cashflow summary
For a management-enabled property, open Real Estate and select the property. The Monthly cashflow summary combines qualifying property transaction lines from linked transactional accounts and any active or historically preserved managed ledgers. It shows:
- Gross rental income
- Less commissions
- Less other direct costs
- Net rental income
- Less operating expenses
- Operating income
- Less interest
- Less loan principal
- Less capital expenditure
- Net cashflow
Use the month controls to review current and earlier periods. The property workspace also provides 12-month cashflow, profit-versus-cashflow and category views.
Editing a transaction’s reporting line, date, amount or category updates the corresponding property transaction line and affected summary. Disabling a managed account does not remove its historical entries from earlier cashflow periods.
Monthly cashflow statement
From Report Centre for the selected management-enabled property:
1. Select Monthly cashflow statement.
2. Choose the required month.
3. Select Generate report.
4. Open the generated PDF. Use View previous to reopen an earlier report.
The report combines qualifying property transaction lines from all relevant sources, presents the detailed real-estate category tree and calculates net rental income and final net cashflow. Generated reports are retained in the property’s Worthic HQ document library.
Cashflow-only properties
A Cashflow only Real Estate reporting line does not appear in the dedicated Real Estate workspace and cannot maintain managed expense or deposit accounts. Its allocated transactional-account activity remains available through Dashboard, Accounts and Documents and can be included in general cashflow reporting.
If a managed property is changed to Cashflow only, its managed ledgers are disabled and hidden rather than deleted. Their history is preserved if Management is enabled again.
Cashflow versus profit
Cashflow includes loan-principal repayments and capital purchases because they reduce available cash, even though they are not normally operating expenses in a profit-and-loss statement. Deposits are liability movements, and transfers between bank and managed ledgers change account balances without changing overall property cashflow.
Use the Annual P&L report for financial-year profitability. It focuses on income, direct and operating costs, finance costs and depreciation rather than cash principal repayments and capital purchases. See Real estate profit and loss for more.
Keeping cashflow accurate
Regularly review pending imports, uncategorized entries, reporting-line allocations, split totals, managed-account balances and FX rates. Confirm that each property uses the correct linked transactional accounts, and reconcile active expense and deposit ledgers.
In short: the source account records where activity occurred, the Real Estate reporting line assigns it to the property, and the category determines its economic treatment.