Utilities are the costs landlords most often eat by accident. A water or heating bill you meant to pass on quietly becomes your expense because it was never tracked. ProperLease fixes that: record the bill, mark who pays, and charge it back so the cost lands where it should. This page covers recording a bill, marking who pays, charging back to a tenant, and how a chargeback flows into the tenant balance and cashflow.
Record a utility bill
Open Utilities and record a bill. For each one you capture:
- The utility and amount on the bill.
- Who pays it: you as the landlord, or the tenant.
- The paid status, so you know whether the bill itself has been settled.
That alone gives you a running record of the utilities you cover, which is one of the costs a spreadsheet quietly loses.
Mark who pays
Marking who pays is the decision that drives everything else. If the tenant is responsible for a utility you fronted, that is the bill you will charge back. If you cover it as part of the rent, recording it still matters: it becomes a deductible property expense and feeds your real cashflow, even though nothing is passed on.
A utility you cover is still a cost of running the property. Recording it means it shows up as an expense and reduces the net cashflow you are taxed on, instead of vanishing from your books.
Charge a bill back to a tenant
When a utility is the tenant's responsibility, charge it back to them. The chargeback ties the bill to a specific tenant, so the amount is now something that tenant owes you rather than a cost you carry. This is how you recover water, hydro, or heating costs cleanly, with a record of exactly which bill the charge came from.
How a chargeback flows through
A chargeback does not sit in isolation. Once you charge a bill back to a tenant, the amount flows into that tenant's balance, so what they owe reflects rent plus the utility. It also flows into your property cashflow, so the recovered cost shows up in the numbers rather than distorting them.
The result is that a utility bill you would otherwise absorb becomes a tracked cost, a tenant charge, and a line in your cashflow, all from one entry. For the wider approach to recovering these costs fairly, read billing tenants for utilities.
Keep it clean at settlement
Because a chargeback raises the tenant's balance, settle it the same way you settle rent. When the tenant pays, the balance clears. At move out, any outstanding chargebacks are part of what is owed, which you weigh against the deposit alongside rent and damages. See hold and return security deposits for how deductions are itemized.
Whether and how you can pass utility costs to a tenant depends on the lease and on provincial or state rules. This is general guidance, not legal advice. Confirm what your lease and jurisdiction allow.
Related
- Record rent payments to settle a tenant balance that includes chargebacks.
- Hold and return security deposits when outstanding charges meet a deposit at move out.
- Add and manage tenants whose balances chargebacks flow into.
Run your rentals with absolute clarity
ProperLease helps self-managing landlords in Canada and the US track rent, generate provincial and state leases, serve notices, and stay tax ready.