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Habitia Help

Enabling double-entry accounting

By default, Habitia tracks rent and work-order costs in a simple way — enough to know who owes what and where your money went. Double-entry accounting is the optional upgrade for landlords who want a proper general ledger: every payment posts to two accounts (debit and credit), and you can produce Trial Balance, P&L, and Balance Sheet reports.

You don’t need this if you don’t already use double-entry accounting elsewhere. Habitia’s regular ledger and reports work fine without it.

Open Settings → Accounting.

Note: Only an admin can enable, disable, or seed the chart of accounts.

When to enable it

  • You have an accountant who insists on double-entry books.
  • You’re consolidating Habitia with an external general ledger (e.g., QuickBooks export).
  • Your portfolio is large enough that you need formal financial statements for taxes, lenders, or partners.

If none of those apply, skip this tab.

Two-step setup

1. Seed the Chart of Accounts

If this is the first time you’re touching Accounting, the Seed Chart of Accounts button is the only action you’ll see. Click it.

Habitia creates a default chart of accounts — a standard set of accounts (Cash, Rent Income, Maintenance Expense, Security Deposits, etc.) tagged with the codes the system needs to post entries correctly.

After seeding, the Chart of accounts section below the status card shows every account with its code, type, and current balance (zero on day one).

2. Enable Accounting

After the chart is seeded, the Enable Accounting button appears. Habitia checks that all required account codes exist; if any are missing, an amber banner lists them — you can re-seed to fix.

Click Enable Accounting. Status flips to Enabled and the green checkmark appears.

From this moment on, every payment, charge, late fee, and credit posts to the general ledger automatically.

Screenshot: Accounting tab showing the Enable Accounting button

What posts where

A few examples of how a transaction breaks into the two-sided entry:

  • Rent payment by ACH → debit Cash (operating account), credit Rent Income.
  • Stripe processing fee deducted from your payout → debit Stripe Fees Expense, credit Cash.
  • Security deposit received → debit Cash, credit Security Deposits Held (a liability).
  • Maintenance work order paid → debit Maintenance Expense, credit Cash.

You don’t see these entries by default — they live in the general ledger view. Habitia exposes them in Reports → Accounting.

Disabling

Click Disable to turn double-entry off. Existing posted entries stay where they are; new transactions stop posting to the GL until you re-enable.

Note: Disabling doesn’t delete the ledger entries Habitia already posted. Books remain auditable for whatever period you had double-entry on.

Books closed through

When you “close” a period (typically year-end), Habitia stamps a books closed through date. Once closed, transactions in that period are locked — you can’t edit them. The closing date shows just below the status badge.

Closing is a manual step done from Reports → Accounting. For most landlords this is an annual ritual; some don’t close at all and just rely on the live trial balance.

What’s next