You can do this in one of two ways.
A: Decrease rent top-up and increase housing benefit, or
B: Increase rent top-up and decrease housing benefit
I shall explain this with an example where we decrease the rent top-up and increase housing benefit.
At the end I shall describe the alternative to increase rent-top-up and decrease housing benefit
The tenant pays 25.00 / month rent top-up and the housing benefit authority pays 750.00 every four weeks.
The housing benefit is charged 28 days in arrears. The tenancy is for 6 months starting on 01/01/2013.
You could use this example and create a temporary housing benefit agreement to try this out then delete the agreement. Just get the feel of how to do it. Create a fixed term tenancy so that you will have a tenancy schedule to amend. I would suggest that you start the tenancy on the first day of whatever month you are in, I am just using 01/01/2013 as my example.
Create the housing benefit tenancy agreement in the usual way, activate the agreement and move the tenant into the property. Save the record, then go back into the agreement and go to the rent schedule. The rent schedule is displayed in date order. Post any rent or housing benefit transactions into Sage. These transactions will then be displayed in pale grey.
There are two ways to amend the schedule, both are a little bit messy but they both work.
A:
The first is to just double click on each un-charged rent or housing line and just change the amount to be charged.
Save any changes. This can be slow for a long schedule but it is accurate.
B.
With the second method click on the option – Re-create the schedule. You will see the prompt – Do you want to clear down the existing schedule ( Yes / No ). Select No and this will leave the old schedule in place. The charging schedule form will appear.
Now in this example we are increasing the housing benefit and decreasing the rent top-up so there may be some adjustments to make if there is a rent top-up credit to the tenant to allow for any over paid top-up, and a housing invoice to allow for any under paid housing benefit. These adjustments are done as opening balances.
Re create the new schedule from the original start date. In this way you are letting Decorus Essentials sort out all the dates for rent and housing benefit.
On the rent form I entered the opening balance date and entered the opening balance as a 15.00 credit, and then set the new rent top-up amount to 20.00. On the housing form I set the opening balance date and entered the opening balance as a 200.00 invoice, and set the new housing amount to 785.00. Make your adjustments as appropriate.
Then click on Create and save the new schedule. You will then see two schedules all mixed up and it looks a bit of a mess. Under the activity tab is the date option. Change this to the groupoption and the schedule will be displayed in
benefit and rent order.
Now all you have to do is to delete all the old un-posted rent and housing items which are displayed in black.
You should be left with a schedule that contains new un-posted rent and housing items in black, any old posted items in pale grey and any rent and housing opening balance adjustments in black.
If there are no rent or housing adjustments just leave the opening balances a 0.00.
If you were increasing rent top-up and there was an adjustment for under paid rent to be paid by the tenant
use the opening balance option and enter the appropriate date and enter the additional rent charge as an invoice.
If there is a reduction in housing benefit to make this adjustment use the opening balance option and enter the appropriate date and the housing adjustment as a credit.
Then click on Create and save the new schedule. You will then see two schedules all mixed up and it looks a bit of a mess. Under the activity tab is the date option. Change this to the groupoption and the schedule will be displayed in
benefit and rent order.
Now all you have to do is to delete all the old un-posted rent and housing items which are displayed in black.
You should be left with a schedule that contains new un-posted rent and housing items in black, any old posted items in pale grey and any rent and housing opening balance adjustments in black.
As I said if there are no adjustments just leave the opening balance figures as 0.00.