Moving your financial data to Expert Agent

When we first developed Expert Agent's Lettings Financial functionality we thought we might be able to migrate financial records over from other products. Jeremy Godwin, the accountant on our team, spent a lot of time looking at how we might do this.

Unfortunately, this proved to be impossible. The data structures for our major competitors' software products are all but incomprehensible. Our lettings financial data is stored in a single table, mimicking a manual set of ledgers. If we exported it to a spreadsheet, you could read it like a ledger. The competitor products we looked at give the impression of being "botched" rather than designed properly from scratch (one of the many benefits with having Jeremy on the team). The ones we looked at have separate tables for fees, VAT, separate tables for each nominal ledger, separate outstanding payments etc etc. A single transaction can therefore be scattered across a multitude of tables. We'd need Alan Turing to piece them together! Quite how the competitors change or improve anything is beyond us.

So, sadly, this always means starting again with Expert Agent financials. This isn't as daunting as it sounds, though.

The first point to consider is when to do so. Some letting agencies continue to manage existing tenancies in their current products and only enter financials into Expert Agent on new tenancies. This makes the swap easier but by definition will take a year or more and can confuse landlords with multiple properties because they'll get two statements. So, most people will choose the business’ year end, quarter end or a more convenient date when the amount of financial data to transfer will be at its lowest point e.g. after paying the landlords and contractors. 

 One of the most important aspects of getting your financial data on to Expert is making sure that your Client Account is correct - this is primarily done by Posting Opening Balances.

To enter the landlord opening balances, you will need to get the balance details from your old system (you may wish to attach PDF copies of the previous landlord statement to the landlord record for reference - maybe even email these to your landlords - Expert Agent makes emailing PDFs very easy). You can then enter the balance in hand or owed - for example agency fees; by using the Posting Opening Balances feature available in each landlord record. You can enter as many opening balances as needed for each landlord, such as monies held or outstanding agency fees. The description is editable and will appear on the statement in the landlord’s record. 

Any contractor’s invoices that are outstanding at the time of moving your data across, will need to be created on the relevant landlord record using the Purchase Invoices function available. Please make sure you bear this in mind when posting the landlord's opening balance. By posting a purchase invoice that is outstanding this will give the landlord a negative balance automatically - you may therefore need to adjust the opening balance accordingly.

You would enter tenants’ opening balances in the same way as your landlords, with the additional feature of being able to enter outstanding rent. Again, you can enter as many outstanding rent demands as needed and can edit the description. For example you can enter rent arrears as one figure or as individual rental periods.

In order to manage any deposits you are holding the funds for, you will need to create the deposit demands and receive the funds onto the system within the individual tenancy records. We would recommend using the original dates from the tenancy so that you have a correct record of dates on the history. You can use the Manage Deposits area to then process to register the protection of the deposit.  For deposit that you have protected via a scheme that you have sent to a scheme then we would recommend adding a note to the event log rather than processing the information. 

If you are going to make use of the automated rent charge function for your managed or rent collection tenancies, it is important to check that the rent amount, frequency and ‘rent next due’ date are set up correctly within the tenants tab of the tenancy record.

When you first sign up for Expert Agent, Becs - our finance specialist will be on hand to chat you through these steps and get you up and running asap.