Real Estate Portfolio Management / Cost Administration / Cost Wizard

Scheduling and Adding Recurring Costs

Note: This topic describes tasks from the Schedule tab of the Cost Wizard if you have not enabled the ARCHIBUS Enhanced Global Feature Set. If have enabled these features, see Schedule Costs When Using VAT and Multicurrency Features topic.

The Schedule Costs tab of the Cost Wizard shows Recurring Costs assigned to the item (lease, building, property, or account) you select. If you select a cost type and category from the restriction console, the costs shown use this restriction. See Restricting Costs by Category and Type.

From the Schedule Costs tab, you can:

Scheduling Recurring Costs
Editing Recurring Costs
Adding Recurring Costs
Deleting costs

You can add costs for the parcels that your business process owner has defined using the Manage Parcels task. See Managing Parcels.

Scheduling Recurring Costs

You can schedule recurring costs so that these costs become Scheduled Cost records that include the exact amount of each income and expense in its own record as an individual cost. Since Scheduled Costs have not yet been approved, they can be changed. Using Scheduled Costs records, you can experiment with chargeback scenarios and more accurately calculate cash flow.

To schedule costs:

Select Cost Administrator / Cost Wizard for Leases, Buildings, or Properties, or Cost Wizard for Accounts.
Use the drill-down selection list to select the item you want to schedule costs for. You can drill down from the country to the parcel.
From the Schedule Costs tab, select at least one Recurring Cost record.
Click Schedule.
In the pop-up window, enter the End Date. This is the date to which you want to schedule out the Recurring Cost records.
Click Schedule Costs.
If no Scheduled Cost records have been previously generated for the selected Recurring Cost records, the system copies the Start Date of the Recurring Cost record to the Due Date field of the first Scheduled Cost record. (Every Recurring Cost record has a Start Date.) The system creates Scheduled Cost records for each interval period up until the End Date you entered.
Otherwise, to avoid duplicating charges for a particular time period, the action starts generating Scheduled Costs from the change-over date. The change-over date is the Date Due value from the most recent Scheduled Cost or Actual Cost record that was generated from the selected Recurring Cost record. The Start Date of the first Scheduled Cost record will be one interval from the change-over date. For example, if a Recurring Cost record has existing Scheduled and Actual Costs generated from it, and if the existing record with the most recent due date is a Scheduled Cost record for a quarterly utility bill due 3/01/2009, the system generates new Scheduled Cost records starting from 6/01/2009.
In order to track which Scheduled Cost records were generated from which Recurring Cost records, the system copies the Recurring Cost Code to the Scheduled Cost that is created. The system uses this assignment in determining the change-over date.
Scheduled Cost Status: When you schedule Recurring Cost records to generate Scheduled Cost records, the system sets the Cost Status for the Scheduled Cost record to Auto-Recurring . This indicates that the program generated this Scheduled Cost record from a Recurring Cost record.
See Cost Wizard Process to view a diagram for this process.

Adding Recurring Costs

To add a recurring cost:

Select Cost Administrator / Cost Wizard for Leases, Buildings, or Properties, or Cost Wizard for Accounts.
Use the drill-down selection list to select the item you want to add Recurring Costs for. You can drill down from the country to the parcel.
Select the Schedule Costs tab, and click Add Recurring Cost.
The Add Recurring Cost Transaction field appears.
Note: You can also add a recurring costs from the Lease Portfolio Console by clicking Add New from the Recurring Costs tab. In this case, you work from the Edit Recurring Cost form.
Enter the following required fields:
Cost Category -- Select a Cost Category from the list. Cost Categories include the chargeback definition that determines which proration and chargeback strategy is used. You can also generate reports and restrict views by excluding or including costs assigned to specific categories. See About Cost Categories.
Start Date -- Enter the date that the Recurring Cost is to begin taking effect. If you generate Scheduled Costs from Recurring Costs, the system copies the Start Date of the Recurring Cost record to the Due Date field of the first Scheduled Cost record, and uses the day of the month for the due date for subsequent Scheduled Cost records.
CAM Cost: By default, this is set to Non-CAM, but you can change this to CAM to indicate that the cost is a common area maintenance cost shared among tenants. See Recording Actual CAM Costs.
Complete the following recommended fields:

Description -- Use this field to describe the cost, similar to the "memo" field of a check.

End Date -- Enter the date that the Recurring Cost is to end.

Note: If the End Date field is left blank, in most views, the Recurring Cost is scheduled to continue indefinitely. However, in the Global Portfolio Dashboard, Recurring Costs with no End Date are not included in the calculation. For this reason, if you are using the Global Portfolio Dashboard, it is recommended to include an End Date for the cost.

Amount - Income /Amount - Expense-- These two fields record the amount of the transaction for the time frame indicated in the Period field. For example, if you pay a quarterly utility bill, enter the amount in Amount-Expense and complete Period with "Quarterly." For each record, complete either the Amount - Income or Amount - Expense field.

Note: You can enter a negative amount in the Amount Income field for a cost. This enables you to associate the cost as a negative amount with an invoice. This is a way of indicating that a contact or business has a credit.

Period -- The interval between payments. Choose MONTH, QUARTER, YEAR, or CUSTOM.

Custom Period (Days) -- If you choose CUSTOM for the above field, complete this field with the custom period in days. For example, enter 45 for a 45-day period.

Seasonal Start Date / Seasonal End Date -- These fields model seasonal costs that enable you to generate a more accurate monthly cash flow.

If you are modeling a seasonal cost, you should specify a Seasonal Start Date and a Seasonal End Date. For example, for a winter lease cost you can specify a Seasonal Start Date of November 15, 20XX and a Seasonal End Date of March 15, 20XX (where XX is any year you choose—the year has no effect, as the table's Start Date field determines when the recurring cost begins to take effect).

If the Seasonal fields have values, the Schedule Recurring Costs action works only with those intervals that fall between the month and day portion of the seasonal dates; the year portion is not evaluated. Thus, a seasonal date will be valid for as many years as the Recurring Cost occurs.

Yearly Factor -- A yearly increase or decrease to factor into the cost beginning from the Start Date. For instance, you can model a 10% yearly increase in lease costs by entering a yearly factor of 1.10. If you enter a value of .75, the lease cost is defined to decrease 25% per year.

Active? -- Use this field to indicate whether the Recurring Cost record should be included in reports, or scheduled when you schedule costs from the Schedule Costs tab of the Cost Wizard. The default is YES. If you currently do not wish the recurring costs to be used in calculations, but want to retain it for future use, set this field to NO.

The system automatically completes the following value:

Date Trans. Created -- The system completes the value with the system date at the time that your create the record.

Recurring Cost Code: This auto-numbered field uniquely identifies the Recurring Cost record.

Tax Bill Number. The number of the tax bill. This facilitates tracking payments.

Tax Type. The type of tax, such as property or school. By entering the tax type, the application is able to break down the yearly tax for property and school.

Tax Period in Months. The number of months covered by this tax bill. The application uses this value to calculate the Yearly Tax Paid shown int he Property Abstracts report.

Tax Value - Assessed. The assessed value for this tax expense. The application uses this value to calculate the Value – Assessed % Tax shown in the Property Abstract report.

Tax Common Level Ratio. The ratio of assessed value to current market value. The application uses this value to calculate the True Assessed value and the Yearly Tax Paid shown in the Property Abstract report.

Tax Authority Contact. Select a contact for the tax. The list is restricted to contact type = "TAX AUTHORITY" or "TAX COLLECTOR".
Click Save. The cost record includes the primary key for the building, property, or parcel you select.
Repeat steps 4-7 for each Recurring Cost you want to add.

Editing Recurring Costs

To edit recurring costs:

From the Schedule Costs tab, click Edit in the row for the Recurring Cost you want to edit.
The Edit Recurring Cost for (Lease / Building / Property / Account) dialog appears.
Edit the fields, as necessary. You can edit any of the fields except the system-generated fields. See Add Recurring Costs for a description of the fields.
Click Save.

Deleting Recurring Costs

To delete recurring costs:

From the Schedule Costs tab, select the Recurring Costs, and click Delete.
You are asked to confirm the deletion.
Click OK.
The Recurring Costs are deleted.