now we will learn how mobile home community owners are required to build their tenants for utilities
if you have any questions about this topic you can leave them in the comments section below
and i'll do my best to help you and of course if you feel the video helped you i hope you will
click like and don't forget to subscribe to get updates on new videos that come out all the time
owners of mobile home communities have regulations on how to charge and collect for electricity each
tenant or occupant must have their own meter the landlord must charge what's on the meter no more
no less usually there is a fixed cost per month plus a charge for the usage regarding how much
they used of electricity as soon as the landlord charges the tenant for the electricity which means
the landlord puts it on the tenant's invoice the landlord immediately owes the electricity cost
whether the tenant pays or not so what's really happening well the tenant uses electricity
the landlord owes the electric company at the minute the tenant uses the electricity so you
need to put an account in the chart of accounts called electric costs payable and that's a current
liability and that account will represent the money that the landlord owes the electric company
for the usage of the tenants electricity so let's go ahead and add that account the way we learned
accounting chart of accounts click new and i think we decided to call it uh electric
costs payable so we know that this is a current liability and the type you know if you want to
get more specific just leave it as other current liability and call it electric costs payable
and that will represent if we click save and close that will represent the money that we owe
to the electric company at the moment we charge the tenant for the electricity now
what else is happening well we have to build the tenant the tenant's balance goes up when
we bill them for electricity when we put the electric item on the invoice the landlord owes
the electricity to the electric company at the minute we put that item on the invoice
so the item on the invoice must be connected to the liability account we just made so we really
have to put two of them okay well look we'll look at the example and then we'll know what item we
have to put for example march 1 we made a new arrangement with dave to bill him for electricity
the way a mobile home community owner must do we're charging twenty five dollars flat fee
plus his current voltage wattage whatever usage and the electric company bills at 50 cents per
watt amp volt or whatever the usage is so you have to put two items you have to put a flat
fee and a usage item and they both have to be connected to the current liability the
electric costs payable so let's go ahead and put those two items on the list we're going to click
we're going to click the cog and then we go over to the lists and go down to product and service
and of course when we when we're at the items list like we've been at several times before we click
new and this is a service because electricity is a service and the first item will be called
electricity dash flat fee and we know oh actually we could fix this with the spell check that's nice
and we know that the account it's connected to will be the liability account we just made
electric costs payable and of course the flat fee will always be the same for all
tenants twenty five dollars so now we have one save and new so now we have
electric flat fee right over here on our list but the next one should be electricity usage
i'm typing vertically here so we use our spell electricity usage and we know that's 0.50 per
unit whether it's watt amp volt or whatever they do but that also has to be collect connected
to the liability account electric costs payable when we click save save and close we can see that
these two items have been added to the items list and they will be added to the invoice
when we bill the tenant for rent and they will make the electric costs payable go up
now let's imagine on march 31 we read the meter and we see that dave used 60 units of electricity
so we will add this charge to the march 31 invoice and pay well we will add this charge
of electric usage plus flat fee to the march 31 invoice for dave now for dave i happen to remember
that dave pays a thousand a month or at least dave would pay a thousand a month if he actually
ever paid us but let's just pretend we're making the march 31 invoice for dave
so we all know there are a couple of different places we could click to open the invoice window
and of course we're going to go back and put the date march 31
okay and we know that the tenant is dave and we know first we have to charge him the rent
which is the rent due and we know that for dave that's a thousand dollars okay good but additional
to that we have to under that item click click the pull down and choose electricity flat fee and
quickbooks remembers that's twenty five dollars and then under that we have to click electricity
usage and quickbooks remembers electricity usage is 50 cents a unit and dave used sixty units
so he's paying thirty dollars of electricity usage plus the twenty five dollar flat fee
plus the thousand dollars rent so this invoice if he ever pays it is one thousand fifty five
dollars now when we click save and close we can jump over to the report we can see for dave
that his balance increased accordingly but more importantly we can click reports trial balance
and we see electric costs payable shows up for the first time as 55 dollars that's because we
added the electricity to attendance balance but we ourselves have not yet paid it so what's the
end of the story the end of the story is april 5th we paid the electric company what we owe
well we all remember how to do that you can click the plus sign and you can click check
and of course we're going to pay con edison our electricity company out here in new york city
quickbooks remembers it was electric expense but this time it's only fifty five dollars but
now here's the problem it's not billable so we have to remove the check mark but this is not
electric expense this is not the electricity that our company used the correct account
to put is the liability account electric costs payable we're not paying the company's electric
expense for what the company or the administration used we're paying what we owe the electric company
for what the tenant used and the tenant will owe it to us so after we pay from the bank account
this electric cost payable the fifty five dollars that we owe when we click save and close we come
back to the trial balance and you can see electric costs payable has gone down to zero