Question Regarding Deposits, Payments and Expenses

I have two questions wondering if you can help me...

Q1. (not so important question). when you entering transactions, do you ever enter for the one item having both payment and expense? or is it not good practice, that is you should enter it twice as two separate items?

For example, say you (the PM) helped the owner buy a new oven. The cost of the oven is $500 (no GST). Say hypothetically, you spent time and fuel to transport the oven to the IP and you should be rightfully paid a fee (expense) of $100 (has GST). So would you enter one item as Oven: payment: $500 expense: $100

or would you enter two items:
Buy oven - Payment $500
Transport Oven - Expense $100

Q2. (Important question.) How does Deposits work? They are different to payments and expenses but I'm not quite sure how they work in the grand scheme of things, when tenant pays Bond is this counted and recorded as Deposit? Also I heard sometimes there's not enough rent money in the kitty to pay for rates or other payments so sometimes owners make a deposit into the trust account for PM to use for paying payments? Can someone please explain how it all works? Is it like the "negative" payments? as they also don't have GST or commission etc?

Thanks for your time.

 

1
You cannot charge yourself for your own time so record only the cost of the item.

2.
A deposit from renters is held by a rental bond board so it is not income. You do not record it in your financials.

Assuming residential.

 

Q1 but what if say it's for fire alarm inspection? and charge a expense to the owner? it has GST? but at the same time it costs to replace a fire alarm from bunnings that would be a payment?

 

If the expense relatesto your own property, in your name, you can't add your own labour BUT if the property belongs to someone else (or another entity eg. @notfullylucky) then you may be able to charge the owner these costs.

If the property manager sends someone to test the alarm then you can claim the total amount. If the PM tells you to buy & install a new smoke detector you can only claim the cost of the alarm.

 

Include gst in what you claim and labour if you pay someone to install it.