Are you a proud homeowner or perhaps even own multiple properties? Then you are certainly well acquainted with the annual utility bill statement. This often pushes property owners to the limits of their patience: paper chaos, lost documents, and confusing meter data are just a few of the reasons why the statement is often incorrect in the end.
In this article, you will find the ten most common reasons for an incorrect utility bill statement as well as helpful tips on how to avoid these mistakes.
1. Incomplete and non-transparent cost breakdown
Tenants' associations point out more and more frequently that up to a third of utility bill statements are incorrect. For tenants to be able to check the statement for accuracy, it must be complete and transparent. You should therefore definitely include the following information in the utility bill statement:
- The billing period
- The individual cost items
- The distribution key
- The total amount of operating costs
- The share of costs that the tenant is to bear
- Any advance payments made
To ensure that utility bill statements are prepared completely and correctly, it is recommended to use a digital tool. This not only saves you a lot of time and effort but also ensures an error-free statement with the help of standardized processes and forms. The right software and helpful tips from Objego help you to send a correct utility bill statement to your tenants in no time.
2. Incorrect agreements in the rental contract
The rental contract precisely regulates which operating costs are passed on to the tenant – and only these costs are permissible in the utility bill statement. Which costs these can be is regulated in the Operating Costs Ordinance (Betriebskostenverordnung):
- Costs for heat supply and hot water supply
- Costs for cold water
- Property tax costs
- Costs for a caretaker
- Costs for property insurance and liability insurance
- Costs for street cleaning and waste disposal
- Costs for a drainage system
- Electricity costs for hallways and other communal rooms
- Costs for chimney sweeps
- Costs for laundry room
- Costs for Electricity and maintenance of elevators and other shared equipment
- Building cleaning costs
- Costs for garden maintenance
- Operating costs such as smoke detector maintenance or drinking water analysis
Passing on new utility costs without consultation? That is not permitted. Only in exceptional cases, if a corresponding supplementary clause is stipulated in the rental contract, can newly incurred utility costs be passed on without notifying the tenant. In all other cases, written notification to the tenant is mandatory.
3. Missing the billing deadline
Even if the utility bill statement costs you a lot of nerves: do not put it off for too long. The tenant must receive the statement no later than twelve months after the end of the billing period. If the utility bill statement is delivered late, you as the landlord generally cannot claim any additional payments. The exception: If the late delivery is not your own fault, the statement remains valid. However, this does not include the reason of extended postal delivery times – you as the landlord bear this risk yourself.
4. Choosing the wrong billing period
The period for which you as a landlord can bill utility costs is a maximum of twelve months. The start of the period can be chosen freely: whether you start the billing in January or only in the summer is not decisive. Only receipts for costs that actually occurred within this period may appear in the utility bill statement.
If there is a change of tenant in your property within this billing period, you must prepare two separate utility bill statements. For this, meter readings must be read accurately and a corresponding partial statement must be created.
5. Charging non-allocable utility costs
Often, costs are passed on to tenants that are not allocable at all. Check whether the following costs, for example, can be found on your statement:
- Insurance benefits such as environmental damage or legal expenses insurance
- Costs for new landscaping on the property, for example, a garden
- Vacancy costs for an empty apartment
- Administrative costs
These costs must be borne by the landlord – if they are found on the utility bill statement, it is incorrect and does not have to be accepted by the tenant.
6. Charging one-off costs
Utility bill statements may only contain costs that occur regularly during the operation of the rental property. You may therefore not pass on one-off repair and cleaning measures, for example for gutters or pest control, to the tenant. The situation is different with recurring maintenance measures: if, for example, you regularly hire a service provider to maintain the roof, these costs may be passed on to the tenant.
7. Billing advance payments to energy suppliers
A utility bill statement may only bill costs that actually occurred during the billing period. As a landlord, you may therefore not demand advance payments via the utility bill statement. Furthermore, these costs may not be billed exclusively independently of consumption: at least half of the heating and hot water costs must be calculated based on consumption – otherwise, the tenant has the right to reduce the payment.
8. Using the wrong distribution key
Every utility bill statement is based on a specific distribution key, which determines the respective costs for the individual rental parties.
Distribution keys are a particularly frequent reason for an incorrect utility bill statement. There are a multitude of details that you as a landlord must consider here. For example, the living space must first be calculated correctly: balconies, window sills, sloping ceilings, and conservatories must be correctly included in the calculation, and the square footage of the rental area must ultimately be exactly correct.
If it is discovered through a re-measurement by the tenant that the distribution key is incorrect, tenants can raise an objection to the utility bill statement.
9. Allocation of unnecessary and uneconomical costs
A frequent point of contention in the utility bill statement is also the economic efficiency of the operating costs. As a landlord, you have the duty not to spend money indiscriminately on unnecessary measures. Instead, you must pay attention to economic efficiency and not generate unnecessary Costs costs. These include, for example, expensive beautification measures, nonsensical insurance policies, overpaid service providers, or excessive salaries for caretakers and cleaning staff.
10. Incorrectly billing own services
Of course, you as a landlord can also engage yourself as a gardener or cleaning service. This effort can and should certainly appear on the utility bill statement – however, care must be taken not to demand exorbitant sums. The rule applies that landlords may only bill costs at a level that inexpensive craftsmen or other service providers would charge for the corresponding activity.
Conclusion
There is a lot of room for error in utility bill statements. The numerous formal requirements, deadlines, and regulations make it difficult, especially for private landlords, to keep track. Try to avoid these ten common mistakes – then you are well on your way to creating a correct utility bill statement. Using digital software can also be helpful: laws and regulations are guaranteed to be complied with, and your utility bill statement will also withstand close scrutiny.
