Owner statements and payouts for managing agents

Collecting the rent is the visible half of managing property for someone else. The half an owner judges you on is the statement at the end of the month: what came in, what you kept, what you spent on their behalf, and what landed in their account. Most tools in this market are weak exactly there, and it is the part that is expensive to get wrong.

What the statement has to answer

• What was actually collected this period, not what was invoiced
• What commission you earned, on that collected figure
• What maintenance was charged to the owner, and for which job
• What tax was withheld, and on what basis
• What the net is, and whether it has actually been paid

Commission is earned on collection

Gross on an owner statement comes from payment allocations dated inside the period - never from what was billed. Commission on billed rent means you earn on arrears you failed to collect, which is both wrong and the wrong incentive. The collection-efficiency report reads the same basis, every allocation paid in the period whatever month the invoice it settles was raised in, so the two reports can never disagree with each other.

A deposit is not a collection. Held money is neither rent billed nor rent collected, so it is excluded from owner gross entirely - it is the tenant's money, sitting in the ledger as a liability until they leave.

Ownership, including the awkward kind

Ownership is recorded in basis points, at property or unit level, so co-ownership splits exactly and never leaves a stray shilling. An owner is an entity in the ledger, which means per-owner books are structural rather than a report you assemble by hand. Each ownership carries its own payout recipient, so a share and the account it pays to travel together.

Deductions, in the order they happen

gross rent collected in the period
  less management commission
  less maintenance charged to the owner
  less tax withheld
  = net payable

Maintenance flows from the job: a request is logged, assigned to a caretaker or technician, costed, and marked as borne by the owner or the tenant. Only the owner's share reaches the statement.

Withholding is computed where the property records you as an appointed agent - 10% of gross rent for a resident landlord, 30% where the landlord is non-resident without a permanent establishment. Zana computes and reports it so the statement is honest about what was deducted; it does not file returns for you, and it is not tax advice. Confirm your own position with an adviser.

Worked example. Riverside Court's Block B collected KES 612,000 in March across 14 units. Your management fee is 8% - KES 48,960. Two plumbing jobs charged to the owner come to KES 11,500. Withholding at 10% of gross is KES 61,200. Net payable: KES 490,340, paid to the owner's recorded recipient and reconcilable line by line back to the payments that made it up.

Approving a statement freezes what it charged

An approved statement locks the maintenance it deducted, so the same job cannot be charged twice. Voiding it releases those jobs again for the next statement, and regenerating a period rebuilds only its drafts - a settled statement is not quietly rewritten under you.

The payout runs on the same rail as any other disbursement: the workspace enable, maker-checker, the approval threshold and the daily cap all still apply, and the request is keyed to the statement so a double-click cannot pay twice. A statement stays approved until the money actually lands - through the provider callback or a polled recheck - so a payout waiting on a second approver, or one that failed, never reads as settled. Money that moved outside Zana can still be marked settled by hand.

Everything else the owner asks for

Rent roll - unit, tenant, rent, lease dates, status and arrears, the single most-used screen in the module. Occupancy - occupied, vacant, vacancy days and turnover per property. Arrears aging by property, owner and unit. Collection efficiency per period, on the same basis as the statements.

What you'll need

Add the properties you manage, record who owns what share and where their payout goes, then generate the period's statements once the rent has been collected.