Resly Blog

Our local accountants, Holmans, share their top tips for Resly clients.

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New Form 6
From 1 May 2024, two new regulatory forms will replace the existing Property Occupations Form 6. 

1. Form 6 will be used for residential property appointments
2. Form 6A will be used for commercial property appointments.

These changes will help provide greater clarity to people completing the forms, streamline the process and enhance the effectiveness of property transactions.

What do you need to do?
From 1 May 2024, you must use the new forms when entering new appointment agreements or updating existing agreements.

You do not need to complete a new form to continue an existing appointment after 1 May 2024. Appointments made through the current Form 6 will remain valid until they are terminated as per the existing agreement. 

Opportunity

This might be a great opportunity to use the issue of the new Form 6 as an “excuse” for requiring the Form 6 to be updated.  This could potentially be a really good strategy if you are concerned about getting Letting Agreement updated.  Now is the opportunity to blame the OFT for the need for the new Form 6 and take any heat off the Agent.

Before you make any big changes to your Form 6 or Schedule, please contact your accountant to ensure you or the owners aren’t negatively impacted by the changes.

Holmans are offering all Resly clients a Letting Appointment health check service and will provide advice thereon. If this is something you are interested in, please contact Holmans at info@holmans.com.au and one of their friendly staff will be in touch.

Cancellation Fees

We have seen a few instances where Cancellation Fees have not been dealt with appropriately. The cancellation fee needs to be dealt with in accordance with your Letting Agreement signed with the Owners. The standard wording included in your Addendum should be as follows:

• If a booking is cancelled and sufficient notice is given by the customer in accordance with the agent’s cancellation policy, an administration fee as set out in the Schedule may be charged by the agent and deducted from any deposit paid by the customer, but all other funds will be returned to the customer.

• If insufficient notice is provided by the customer in accordance with the cancellation policy such that any deposit or rent paid by the customer is forfeited, the agent may charge commission, any advertising/promotion levy and any management and or services fee or the like on the amount forfeited and pay the remaining balance to the client.

What do you need to do? 

1. Ensure your Letting Appointment Addendum addresses cancellation fees - we recommend using the ARAMA Addendum.
2. Ensure you have an administration fee set out in your Schedule of Charges – if you do not have an administration fee in your schedule of charges, ensure you include a fee when you next update your appointment, or ensure you have communicated the Administration fee with the owners before charging.

Stale Funds Held in the Trust Account

As auditors we are required to report to the Office of Fair Trading whether any funds greater than 3 months have been held in the trust account, this could be;

1. Owner Funds
2. Supplier funds
3. Bookings
4. Tenant Funds
5. Bond Funds

It is very important to implement as part of your end of month process to review your Owner Funds, Supplier Funds, Booking Funds, Bond Funds and Tenancy Funds to ensure there are no stale monies sitting in the trust account and pay any monies to the rightful owner.  

If you have any bookings which have exceeded their arrival date, review these bookings and allocate it to accommodation if the guests arrived, amend the booking dates if the guest postponed the booking or refund in accordance with your cancellation policy.

It is a requirement for the licensee to take all the necessary steps to find the original owner of the funds and return the un-used deposit to the original owner. If, after all the steps have been taken to find the original owner have failed, it is a requirement to forward all unclaimed money to the public trustee for outstanding amounts greater than 12 months.

You are required to provide the following details:

• the full name of the person who the money belongs to
• the last known address
• the amount owing to them
• what the money represents eg refund of deposit
• from what date you held the money

This can be done via the Public Trustee website: https://www.pt.qld.gov.au/other-services/unclaimed-money/lodge-unclaimed-money/

Non-Trust Monies

Trust money is money you handle on behalf of someone else, under your appointment to act as an agent. Non-trust monies are amounts you receive that are unrelated to acting as an agent (usually between you and the guest). Usually, non-trust money must be paid into a general account, but there are some circumstances where it can be paid into a trust account.

If you receive an amount consisting of both trust money and non-trust money, which cannot be practically divided, you must pay the whole amount to the trust account. The portion that is non-trust money must be removed from the trust account within 14 days of the money becoming available. If you receive regular money from an owner occupier or tenant for internet, foxtel, gardening etc, then best to invoice them directly from your general account software and get them to pay into your general account, if unavoidable, ensure you disburse from your trust account at least at mid-month.

Trust money might include payments for: 

1. rent
2. sales deposits
3. holiday accommodation
4. utilities that aren’t already included in the rent
5. advertising expenses
6. property repairs you need to organise on behalf of your client
7. bonds.

Non-trust money might include payments for goods or services such as:

1. trips and tours
2. restaurant meals
3. room service
4. equipment hire
5. transport.
6. Towler hour
7. Kiosk purchases

Resly has made this a very easy and smooth process! Here is a step by step article from Resly on how to withdraw non-trust monies - Click Here

If you need any further information, please refer to the OFT Website.

Emailing Owners in Bulk

Next time you update your schedule of charges, we highly recommend using the Bulk email function in Resly and attach the updated schedule of charges to the bulk email. This will mean that the correspondence will be saved in Resly against the owner files and will be accessible by you and your auditor and at any given point your auditor will be able to see the current schedule of charges. Here is an article from Resly with easy steps.

You will still have to ensure you save the correspondence externally, other than Resly.