Recovery profiles

Remembers how a utility bill is shared across units, and does the split each month.

A water, sewer, trash or gas bill for a whole building is paid by the owner, and part of it is often owed back by the residents. A recovery profile is the split you set once for one building: how much the owner keeps, how the rest is shared across the units, and what happens to a vacant unit's share. Each month you confirm who lives where, look at the split, and inletAP proposes one share per unit.

Nothing is owed back until a person confirms it. A profile only proposes. Every share is a recovery that starts as proposed, and each one is confirmed or waived like any other. The bill in your ledger stays at the vendor's full amount.

Recovery profiles are on every plan, including Free.

Before you start

• Your role. An Admin or a Controller Approver makes and changes profiles. An AP Specialist can see them and apply one to an invoice. A Viewer cannot see them.
• The building has its units. A profile shares a bill across the building's active units. Add them under Units, or load them with importing your data.
• The figures the split needs are on the units. A split by square footage needs each unit's square feet, and a split by bedrooms needs each unit's bedroom count. A unit without the figure is never read as zero: the split is refused, and the refusal names the unit.

1. Make a profile

Go to Settings → Recoveries and add a recovery profile. You fill in:

• A name, for example "Harborview water".
• The building.
• The vendor, or any vendor. One water company often bills every building you manage, so the vendor and the building together say which bill this is.
• The account number printed on the bill, optional. With it, a bill from the same vendor for another account is never offered this profile.
• The reason. Usually a utility. A chargeback to a unit owner is offered only on a property whose type is Condo / HOA.
• The owner's share. The part the owner keeps before anything is shared: common areas, irrigation, the laundry room. There is no default. Type the figure you use, or 0.
• How the rest is shared. One of:
  • Evenly, one share per unit.
  • By square footage, read from each unit.
  • By bedrooms, through a table you type: a weight for each bedroom count, for example 1 bedroom = 1, 2 bedrooms = 1.6, 3 bedrooms = 2.2, and an optional "each additional" weight added for every bedroom above the largest count in the table.
  • By occupants, through the same kind of table, applied to the number of people you confirm for each unit on each bill.
  • A weight you set per unit, typed on the profile. A unit with no weight is refused when the bill is shared, and 0 is allowed.
  • A blend, for example half by square footage and half by occupants. The parts must add up to 100%. Each part is worked out on its own and then mixed.
• Units never billed, such as the manager's own unit or a model suite.
• What happens to a vacant unit. Either the owner keeps a vacant unit's share (the default), or the vacant units' share is spread over the occupied units. When you choose to spread it, the editor warns you that some places do not allow a vacant unit's share to be passed on to the occupied units for some charges. Check the rules that apply to the building.
• A fee, only if your workspace uses them. Fees are off unless an Admin turns them on in the recovery settings. A fee is a flat amount per unit or a percentage of each share, and it is kept apart from the share.
• A charge code, the code your PMS posts the charge under.
• Apply on arrival, off by default. See step 3 below.

inletAP has no presets for any place, and it does not check your split against local law. The numbers on a profile are the ones you type.

2. Share a bill

Open the invoice. When a profile matches it, the Owed back panel offers it under Recovery profiles for this bill. A profile matches when:

• the invoice is coded to the profile's building, on the invoice or on a slice of its split;
• the vendor is the profile's vendor, or the profile is for any vendor; and
• the account number on the invoice is the profile's. A different account number is never offered. When no account number was read, the profile is still offered, with a note to check the account before applying.

Press Share across units. The dialog asks three things:

1. Who lives in each unit today. Tick the units that are occupied. The list is filled in from the last time the profile was used. A unit that is new since then is left unanswered, and the dialog says so, for example "Unit 13 is new since the last apply on 2026-08-31; is it occupied?". Nothing about a unit is assumed. When the split is by occupants, type how many people live in each unit.
2. The tax the owner paid. Recover it, do not recover it, or follow the building's or the workspace's setting. See cost recovery.
3. What is shared. The whole invoice, or only the lines you tick.

Then press Preview the split. The preview shows the bill, what the owner keeps first, the vacant units' share that stays with the owner, the owner's total, and each unit's share. It checks that the shares and the owner's total add back to the whole bill. Nothing is written by a preview.

When the preview is right, press Propose these shares. inletAP proposes one share per occupied unit, and the profile remembers the occupancy for next time. The button works only for the inputs you previewed: change a tick and you preview again.

If the split cannot be worked out, the dialog says why, in words that name the unit. For example: "Say whether unit 102 is occupied before the bill is shared." Nothing is proposed.

Confirming the shares

Each share is a proposed recovery. Confirm them one at a time, or press Confirm all N shares from the profile, above the list, to confirm every proposed share it made on this invoice in one go. Confirm several… does the same for any proposed recoveries you tick, and the Recoveries list has Confirm selected across invoices.

Each share is still checked on its own, exactly as if you had pressed its own Confirm: a damage charge or a chargeback needs its note, and at or above your second-person amount somebody else confirms it. One refused share does not stop the others. A sentence such as "9 of 11 confirmed. 2 refused." says what happened, and each refused share says why in its own row.

Applying it again

Apply a profile again to the same invoice, and it replaces the shares that nobody has confirmed or edited yet, so you never get two sets. Once a person has confirmed or edited one of its shares, applying it again is refused. Waive those shares first if the split has to change.

How the cents are worked out

The owner's share is worked out first and rounded half-up to the cent. The rest is shared by weight. Leftover cents go one at a time to the units with the largest remainders, so the shares always add up to the cent. The same inputs always give the same cents, and the preview marks the units that took a rounding cent.

For example: Harborview has 12 units, the water bill is $2,400.00, and the owner keeps 10%. The split is even and the owner keeps a vacant unit's share. Unit 7 is vacant.

• The owner keeps $240.00, and $2,160.00 is shared: $180.00 a unit.
• Unit 7's $180.00 stays with the owner, so the owner's total is $420.00.
• 11 shares of $180.00 are proposed, $1,980.00 in all. $1,980.00 + $420.00 = $2,400.00.
• If the vacant units' share is spread instead, $2,160.00 is shared by 11 units: seven shares of $196.36 and four of $196.37.

Each share keeps every input it was worked out from: the bill, the owner's share, the weights, the occupancy and its date, and the vacancy rule. That is what answers "why was unit 4B asked for $187.42?" a year later.

3. When the bill arrives

A profile is offered by default. Turn on Apply on arrival, and inletAP proposes the shares as soon as the next bill from that vendor for that building is read, with the occupancy from the last time you applied it by hand.

• A person still checks and confirms every share. The shares are proposed, never confirmed for you.
• The invoice cannot be approved until they are handled. Until every share the profile proposed on arrival is confirmed or waived, approving the invoice is refused with a sentence such as "11 shares of this bill from a recovery profile are still proposed. Confirm or waive them before approving the invoice." A profile you apply by hand does not hold the invoice.
• When it runs. Profiles set to apply on arrival run when a new invoice has been read and coded, and again whenever a person sets or changes the invoice’s property (or its split’s properties), its vendor, or its account number, while it is still in review or waiting for approval.
• It needs a vendor, and the account number must match when the profile has one.
• It waits for you when something changed. Nothing is proposed on arrival when the profile has never been applied by hand, when a unit is new since the last time, or when the split cannot be worked out. The profile is still offered on the invoice.
• The building comes from the invoice's coding. An invoice coded to another building is not offered the profile.

Because a profile with apply on arrival proposes shares before anybody opens the invoice, only an Admin or a Controller Approver can make or change one.

The service period and the account number

On the invoice screen, the Invoice header shows the Service from, Service to and Account number that inletAP read off the bill, with how sure it was. You can correct them there like any other field. A corrected account number is what makes the right profile match.

The service period is copied onto each share a profile proposes, and it fills in Service from and Service to when you add a recovery by hand. The charge sheet carries it, so your PMS can prorate a move-in or move-out. inletAP does not prorate.

What the invoice's words suggest

When a line of the invoice says that somebody else caused the cost, for example "tenant locked out" or "damage beyond normal wear", inletAP shows it under What the invoice's words suggest: "Looks like tenant damage" with the words it read, in quotes, and how sure it was.

• It is a suggestion. It quotes the words on the line and invents nothing. A line that does not say so gets no suggestion.
• When the line names the unit, a recovery for the whole line is proposed, marked AI suggestion. Confirm or waive it like any other.
• When no unit is known, nothing is proposed and the suggestion asks Which unit?. Press Choose the unit: the add dialog opens with the line and the reason filled in, and you pick the unit.
• When a suggestion is not proposed, the list says why in a sentence, for example that the line would take what is owed back over the cost of the invoice, or that a person already waived it on that line.
• It never picks who owes it beyond what the line says, and it never holds the invoice.

Rules that mark a recovery

A rule with the Mark recoverable action does the same for invoices it matches, for example "invoices from the locksmith are a service call owed back by the resident". It proposes a recovery for each line whose unit is known and, for a line with no known unit, shows the rule's name with Which unit? in the same list. A rule never confirms a recovery and never holds the invoice. Rules are part of the rules engine on paid plans; see the rules reference.

Who can do what

Deleting a profile keeps the recoveries it already proposed, with their amounts.

What a profile does not do

• It does not know who lives where. You confirm the occupancy on each bill; the profile only remembers your last answer and the date you gave it.
• It does not prorate a move-in or move-out inside the service period.
• It has no presets for any place and does not check a split against local law.
• It sends nothing to a resident, and it never reduces the payable to the vendor.

Limits

Where to go next

• Cost recovery — one recovery, from proposed to recorded, and the charge sheet.
• Units — the units a profile shares a bill across.
• Audit trail — every profile change and every apply is recorded.