Recording payments and the ledger

What the money terms mean

Karyasthan tracks three separate kinds of money on a tenancy, and it helps to keep them apart:

• Rent is the recurring monthly charge. Every rented unit has one rent row per month, each with a status: Paid, Due soon, Partial, or Overdue. Rent is the only "this month" figure.
• Opening balance, also called arrears, is a one-time amount the tenant already owed before you started tracking them in Karyasthan. It belongs to no particular month and has no status of its own. It simply stays outstanding until you pay it down. You set it and record payments against it from the property detail page (see Properties and units).
• Deposit is the refundable security you hold. It is not income and not a debt: it shows on a property as Deposit held and never counts towards what is owed or collected.

Two summary figures track what's paid and what's owed:

• Collected is rent paid plus any opening balance paid.
• Outstanding is this month's unpaid rent only. Arrears (unpaid opening balances) is its own separate figure shown alongside it, never folded into Outstanding.

A status chip (Paid, Partial, Due, Overdue) always describes a unit's rent for the month, never its opening balance. So a unit can show Paid for this month while still carrying an opening balance you are paying off separately.

The Rent page

Rent shows this month's ledger: every rented unit, the tenant's name, the rent due in ₹, and a status chip: Paid, Due soon, Partial, or Overdue (with the number of days late).

A summary bar at the top shows total Collected, Outstanding, and the number of rented units for the month. Outstanding here is this month's rent only; any unpaid opening balance shows as its own Opening balance (Arrears) figure, not mixed into it.

Recording a payment (Owners and Managers only)

1. Click any unpaid row, or click the Mark paid button directly.
2. A drawer opens on the right showing the tenant, the amount due for the month, and a receipt preview.
3. Set the Date (defaults to today) and pick the payment Method: Cash, Bank transfer, UPI, or Cheque.
4. If the tenant has a phone number on file, a toggle appears to send them a receipt on payment.
5. Click Mark paid & send receipt. The row updates to Paid right away and the receipt number (KY-YYYY-####) is saved.

tip: Viewers see the ledger but the Mark paid button is disabled for them. Only Owners and Managers can record payments.

Undoing a payment (Owners and Managers only)

Recorded a payment by mistake, or against the wrong unit? Any row that already has money against it shows an Undo button: next to Receipt on a paid row, or beside Mark paid on a partly-paid one. Click it, confirm in the dialog, and the rent returns to unpaid for the month: the paid amount is cleared, the status goes back to Due, and the saved receipt is removed. The rent that was owed is unchanged, so you can record the payment again whenever you like.

A payment undone entry is added to the property Timeline, with your name against it, so the correction is on the record. Viewers do not see the Undo button.

The Ledger page

Ledger shows every transaction across all your properties, including past months, in a filterable table: rent dues and payments, plus opening-balance payments listed as their own rows, so you can see arrears being paid down alongside rent. You still set an opening balance and start paying it down from the property detail page (see Properties and units); once you record a payment there, it shows up here too.

• Filter by Property, Status (Paid / Due / Overdue), and a date range.
• Sort any column by clicking the column header.
• Click Export CSV to download the current view. Each row includes the date, property, unit, tenant, amount in ₹, status, and receipt number.
• Clicking a row navigates to the property detail.
• If any property carries an unpaid opening balance, a separate Arrears outstanding summary stat appears alongside Collected and Outstanding.

The Ledger loads 25 rows at a time. Click Load more at the bottom to fetch the next batch. Sorting reorders the rows already loaded.

See also: Reminders and receipts, Reports and dashboard.