Charge Codes

A charge code is the label REDA puts on every amount it bills — Rent, Late Fee, Security Deposit, Utilities Recovery, and so on. It is a small piece of setup with an outsized effect: the charge code decides who the invoice is billed to, how many days the tenant gets to pay, whether the invoice is folded into a consolidated bill, and whether the amount ever accrues a late fee. This article explains what a charge code is, walks through every switch on one, and answers the question that trips people up most often: when REDA generates an invoice, which charge code actually lands on it? No prior REDA setup experience is assumed — every term is defined as we reach it.

What a charge code is

Think of charge codes as your billing vocabulary — a fixed, reusable set of categories that every charge and every invoice speaks. When someone sets up rent on a lease, adds an amenity fee, or configures a late-fee rule, they pick a charge code to say what kind of money this is. That single choice then carries a bundle of behavior with it onto every invoice the charge produces.

Charge codes are master data — shared reference records you set up once and reuse everywhere, like a chart of accounts. Because historical charges and invoices point back at their code, you never delete an obsolete code; you switch it off instead (see the Is Active switch below). That keeps old records readable while removing the code from new selections.

The switches, one by one

A charge code is mostly a set of toggles and defaults. Here is what each one does, grouped by the job it performs. You rarely set all of them — most codes need only a name, Is Active, and perhaps a grace-day figure.

Pass-through codes: rerouting the receivable

By default, an invoice's money is owed to the property's Owner Account — the landlord being billed on behalf of. A pass-through code changes that. When you tick Is Pass Through, three things flip on every invoice the code produces:

• The receivable moves. The account that's owed becomes the code's Default Receivable Account if one is set; if it isn't, it falls to the property's PM Company/Entity (your management company) instead of the owner.
• The property can swap. If the code has a Default Property, the invoice is stamped with that property rather than the lease's own.
• It never joins a batch. Pass-through invoices are excluded from consolidated bills, even if Group Invoices is ticked — so a pass-through charge always stands as its own invoice.
• One more condition, whatever the code says. An invoice joins a batch only when its code has Group Invoices on, is not pass-through, and its amount is greater than zero. A zero or negative line — a promotion credit, for example — always stands alone, however the code is configured.

Pass-through is how you bill things that flow through the property to a different party — recovered utilities owed to the management entity, for example, rather than rent owed to the owner.

The feature feeds

Four tick-boxes decide whether a charge under this code participates in an optional billing engine. Each is a gate: the engine only ever touches charges whose code has the matching box ticked.

Which charge code lands on the invoice?

This is the question that causes the most confusion, because a charge can be linked to several things at once — a fee setup, a lease ticket, an amenity — and each of those can carry its own charge code. So which one wins?

The rule is simple once stated plainly: the code comes from wherever the charge itself came from. When REDA generates an invoice, it reads the charge code from the charge's source:

In practice a charge has only one source populated, so the everyday summary holds: the code follows the charge's origin, and a ticket's code steps in only when there's nothing else to use. The billing comment follows the same logic — REDA uses the source's description, and only falls back to the code's Default Billing Description if the source has none.

Worked example: a pass-through utility

Your portfolio recovers water from tenants and owes it to the management entity, not the owner. You set up a code Utilities Recovery: Is Active ticked, Is Pass Through ticked, Default Receivable Account = the management entity's account, Opp Invoice Payment Grace Days = 5, Group Invoices ticked (which is moot — pass-through never batches).

Aisha Rahman at Meridian Court #101 has a 120.00 monthly utility charge under this code. When it bills on the 1st, the invoice comes out routed to the management entity — not the owner — is due on the 6th (billing date 1st + 5 grace days), and stands on its own rather than joining the rent batch. Contrast a plain Rent code with pass-through off: its invoice is owed to the property's Owner Account and is eligible to be consolidated with other groupable charges.

The Charge Codes list view. Each active code carries a short description of what it invoices for — residential rent, application fees, security-deposit charges, tenant referrals, late fees, month-to-month charges, booking fees and common-area maintenance. The Is Active column confirms all eight are switched on.

The rent-residential charge code record. Its Defaults block carries the routing fields — Is Pass Through, Default Receivable Account and Default Property — that decide who an invoice raised from this code is billed to.

The same record's feature flags. Group Invoices and Charge Late Fee sit in the Defaults block, alongside the Include In Straight-Line Calculation, Include In Reconciliation Snapshots and Include in Inflation Calculation switches that decide which downstream processes pick this code up.

Field reference

Every field on a charge code, at a glance:

Where to go next

1. How Billing Works in REDA — how charges turn into invoices, end to end.
2. Invoices Explained — reading a generated invoice, field by field.
3. Consolidated Invoices (Batches) — how groupable invoices are combined.
4. Late Fees — the engine gated by the Charge Late Fee flag.
5. Settlement Codes — the sister vocabulary for settlements.

Frequently asked questions