Service charge calendar management overview

The calculation and collection of service charges is controlled through the creation of one or more calendars. The precise number of calendars available is at the discretion of the housing organisation but as a minimum a separate calendar must exist for each individual company. Once created, the calendar is then linked to one or more periods, each with a specific start and end point, setting out the duration over which service charge activities take place. Therefore, a period is simply the defined time span in which financial events take place - specifically, the frequency at which service charges are levied to tenants - and can represent a whole year, a quarter, individual months or even weeks. Each service charge calendar period can also be mapped to an equivalent nominal period, as defined within the management accounts i.e. the accounting period used to summarise the cash coming in and out of the housing organisation during that service charge calendar period. A period can be set to commence at any point in time and is not fixed to, say, the first day of the month, or the start of the financial year, although it is recognised that for many housing organisations they will mirror the accounting periods, typically those dictated by the tax year. Irrespective of the charging frequency in operation, the availability of discrete periods supports not only the service charging policy adopted by the housing organisation but also the retrieval of 'actual' and 'estimate' benchmark figures that can be used in subsequent calculations and comparisons.

Separate help articles have been created for each key aspect of service charge calendar management, including:

• To create a service charge calendar cycle
• To add a new period to a service charge calendar cycle
• To remove a period from a service charge calendar cycle