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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.
  • Deposit disposition finalized (at move-out) → debit Security Deposits Held for the deposit applied, credit Rent Income / Late Fees / Deposit Recoveries for each deduction, credit Deposit Refunds Payable for what you still owe the tenant back. If the damage exceeded the deposit, the shortfall debits Accounts Receivable. Reopening the disposition voids the entry.
  • Owner service charge (inspection fee, tenant placement, …) → debit Due to Owners, credit Service Fee Income. No cash moves — the fee is retained from collected rent, and the books now show it as your earnings.

You don’t see these entries by default — they live in the general ledger view. Habitia exposes them in Reports → Accounting. Each report there — Trial Balance, P&L, Balance Sheet, and the Journal — downloads as a PDF from the button next to its heading, ready to hand to your accountant.

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.

Closing a period

When your books for a month, quarter, or year are final (typically after your accountant reviews them), close the period so nothing can quietly change it: in Settings → Accounting, under Period close, pick a cutoff date and click Close books through this date.

From then on, anything dated on or before the cutoff is locked platform-wide — you can’t post, edit, void, or delete payments, ledger entries, deposit dispositions, owner charges, or manual journal entries in the closed range. Attempts are refused with a clear message instead of silently desyncing your books.

Need to fix something in a closed period? An admin can click Reopen (or close through an earlier date), make the correction, and close again. 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