Occupant Management & Billing

Rent is generated for you, occupants pay from their own portal, and everything owed and paid sits in one place at Admin → Rentals → Charges. This article covers how charges are created, how money comes in, late fees, statements, and what happens at move-out. Setting up spaces, agreements and occupants is covered in Managing Spaces and Agreements.

Availability: Space Rentals is included from the Studio plan up. See Plans and Pricing.

How rent gets charged

You do not raise a rent charge each month. Crafted Call generates it from the agreement, on the billing day you set, in the agreement's currency and your organization's billing timezone. Rent keeps being generated for as long as the agreement is active.

Charges are also created for a Deposit, a Late fee, an Early termination fee, a Damage fee, a Utility charge, or anything else you add as Other.

Every charge moves through a state you can see: Upcoming, then Due, then Processing while a payment clears, then Paid. A charge can also be Failed, Retry pending, Canceled, Refunded, Partially refunded or Expired.

The charges console

Admin → Rentals → Charges is the working list. Each row gives you:

• Download invoice, which opens a printable invoice for that charge. Print it or save it as a PDF from your browser.
• Record payment, for money that arrived outside the platform, such as a cheque.
• Apply late fee, which raises the late fee as its own charge against the same occupant.
• Waive charge, for a charge you have decided not to collect.

You can also send a reminder about a charge, preview the reminder before it goes, or send yourself a test copy. Reminders only reach current occupants on the agreement. Someone removed from it is not chased for the balance.

How occupants pay

An occupant sets up payment from their portal after you send them an invitation. They link a bank account through Stripe, which is the payment method available to them today, and pay their outstanding charges with Pay Now. Once a bank is linked they can also turn on Autopay from their portal, and rent is then taken from that account on each due date. Their portal shows their current balance, what is outstanding, what is processing, and their full payment history with Download Receipt on each payment.

The processing cost of a bank payment is shown to them for information only. They pay exactly their rent, with nothing added on top.

Late fees

Configure your late fee rule in Admin → Rentals → Settings: a fixed amount or a percentage. Apply it to an overdue charge from the charges console with Apply late fee. The fee becomes its own charge, so it appears separately on statements and can be waived on its own if you change your mind.

Settings worth knowing about

Admin → Rentals → Settings also holds:

• Your billing timezone, which decides what "the 1st" means.
• How many days before a due date reminders go out.
• How failed payments are retried.
• Pause Auto-Pay, a switch that stops all automatic collection across your rentals. It exists for the day something is wrong and you need everything to stop. Turn it back on when you have sorted it out.

Statements

Open an occupant and go to their Payment History. Set a Start Date and End Date for the period you want, then use:

• Download statement (PDF) for a document listing the occupant, the period, charges in the period, total paid and total outstanding, followed by every charge and payment with its due date, space, description, type, amount, status, paid date and method.
• Export charges (CSV) for the same rows in a spreadsheet.

Set the period to your tax year and this is the year-end statement an occupant asks for. Leave the dates empty and you get every charge on record. Statements are capped at 500 rows, and if a period is larger than that the document says so and tells you to narrow it.

Statements are produced by you, not downloaded by the occupant. Email the file, or hand it over.

Reports

Admin → Rentals → Reports covers the questions you get asked: accounts receivable ageing, occupancy, revenue by space, a reconciliation view, and a summary, all exportable as CSV.

Move-out

When an agreement ends:

1. Complete a move-out condition report and compare it against the move-in report. See Managing Spaces and Agreements.
2. Raise any final charges: damage, cleaning, or rent through the move-out date.
3. Process the deposit return, less anything documented.
4. Terminate the agreement, which frees the space.

Do the deposit promptly. Several jurisdictions set a deadline for returning it, and a documented condition report is what makes a deduction defensible.

Troubleshooting

Rent did not generate this month. Check the agreement is still active and that its billing day is set. Pausing auto-pay does not stop rent being generated.

Rent was generated but not collected automatically. Check the occupant has turned autopay on in their portal, and that Pause Auto-Pay is off in your rentals settings. While it is on, nothing is collected automatically, retries included.

An occupant says they paid but the charge is still open. A bank payment sits in Processing until it clears. Payments recorded by hand need Record payment on the charge.

A former occupant is still getting reminders. Check they were removed from the agreement. Reminders go to current occupants only.

The invoice opened in a browser tab instead of downloading. Invoices open as a printable page. Use your browser's print dialog to save it as a PDF.

A statement is missing charges. Statements list up to 500 rows for the period. Narrow the date range and produce two.

Next steps

• Managing Spaces and Agreements
• Managing Rental Interest and Leads

For more help, contact support at support@craftedcall.com.