The rent ledger: charges, payments, reversals, and statements

Every lease has an append-only ledger: charges post as debits, payments as credits, and a running balance is always current. Nothing is ever silently edited — that is what makes it court-ready.

How entries work

Rent charges, late fees, utility splits, and invoice sends post as charges. Payments — cash, check, money order, bank, card, other — post as credits in a database transaction. Each payment generates a printable receipt PDF and an automatic receipt email on record.

Fixing mistakes: reversing entries

There is no edit button on a posted entry, on purpose. Corrections happen as reversing entries that appear on the ledger alongside the original — the trail a judge, a bank, or an auditor expects. Reversing a payment posts the offsetting ledger entry automatically.

Statements

Print a full ledger statement PDF for any lease — every charge, payment, and reversal with the running balance. You can also issue a revocable, read-only statement link for a tenant, co-signer, or court clerk that shows balance, ledger, and invoices without a login.

Why append-only matters

Ledgers, deposits, and leases are never hard-deleted, and an always-on audit log records who changed what, when, from which IP, on sensitive records. In housing court, the record that cannot be quietly rewritten is the record that holds up.

Common questions

Can I edit a posted entry?

No, and that is enforced in three places rather than one: the model refuses the update, the database foreign keys refuse to cascade a delete into the ledger, and a database trigger blocks a raw SQL update of a posted row. Even direct database access cannot quietly rewrite history. Corrections are reversing entries, always.

What do I actually hand a judge?

The ledger statement PDF for the lease — every charge, payment, and reversal with the running balance — alongside the payment receipts and, if the record is challenged, the audit trail showing who entered what and when.

How is the balance calculated?

Charges as debits, payments as credits, using arbitrary-precision arithmetic on exact amounts inside a transaction. No floating-point rounding drift, which is how a ledger ends up eleven cents wrong and impossible to defend.

Can I show someone the ledger without giving them a login?

Yes. Issue a revocable, read-only statement link showing the balance, ledger, and invoices. Revoke it when it has done its job.