Refunding a Deposit (With Client Accounting)
This article explains how to refund a deposit if you use Street for your Client Accounting. For more information on how to refund a deposit without Client Accounting, see this help article.
Refunding the Deposit
The process for refunding a deposit will depend on the scheme type.
Refunding a Custodial Deposit
To refund a custodial deposit, go to the deposit page on the tenancy and click the 'add refund outcome' button. From here you can enter the amount of money due to the tenant and the owner.
This will mark the deposit status as 'Closed' and log how much each party received. In most cases at this stage, the scheme will refund the tenants share directly to the tenant and send the owner's share to your agency to pay to the owner.
When you receive the owner's share from the scheme, this should be receipted and reconciled onto the Owner Ledger, ready to be used in the Allocate Funds stage for any charges like maintenance work or to be paid to the owner.
Note - If there are outstanding rent charges and you are planning to use the owner's share of the deposit refund to cover those rent charges, you should receipt the owner's share onto the tenancy ledger instead, so this can be allocate to the outstanding rent charge.
If you need to handle a dispute on a Custodial deposit, see our Disputing a Deposit Refund help article.
Refunding an Insured Deposit
To refund an insured deposit, again go to the deposit page on the tenancy and click the 'add refund outcome' button and enter the amount of money due to the tenant and the owner.
Confirming this will update the deposit status to 'To Refund' and immediately move the respective money to the tenant and owner ledgers.
Tip - If you are holding the deposit money in a deposit account but will be paying it out to the tenant / owner from your client account, don't forget to transfer the deposit back to your client account in Street using the 'Transfer' button before you make any payments.
With the money on the respective ledgers, you can issue a refund to the tenant from the tenancy ledger using the actions > issue refund option.
And for the owner's share, it will be ready to be used in the Allocate Funds stage for any charges like maintenance work or to be paid to the owner.
If you need to handle a dispute on an Insured deposit, see our Disputing a Deposit Refund help article.
Refunding a Held by Owner Deposit
To refund a held by owner deposit, you won't see a 'refund outcome' button as the landlord will be handling the deposit refund and if there is any money owed to the tenant, the landlord will pay the tenant directly.
In this case you would simply click the 'close deposit' button to close the deposit when you've had confirmation from the landlord and/or tenant that the deposit has been handled.
Note - Held by Owner deposits cannot be disputed through Street as the landlord will be handling the deposit and any disputes.
Street is constantly being updated. This can mean that some of these articles become slightly out of date. If you spot something that looks a little bit different to your Street account, please let us know on the live chat so we can get it updated!