The first record is the rent register (Form 32) described in Section 37, and kept as therein indicated. Each house taken in charge should at once be entered on this record, and an account therefor immediately opened in the ledger.

The rent receipt book (Form 33) is described in Section 38. The use of some such form should be insisted on.

The cash book is of the simplest form, and generally only two columns on each side are required. On the debit side, the first column is for the entry of each separate item; the other, for the entry of the total collections for the day, which should also be the amount of the bank deposit on the following day. The other side of the cash book is as simple.

Where rents are collected for a comparatively small number of owners, or where it is desirable to keep apart the collections and disbursements for one or more accounts, a columnar cash book may be used, a column on each side being devoted to one client. In this case the total bank deposit should also be the total of all the debit columns for the day, i.e., the day's collections. This method is convenient where the owners do not number more than, say, twenty, but a columnar book containing many more columns than this becomes inconvenient to use.

Most of the items on the credit side will be weekly payrolls or monthly bills, and each such item should be properly distributed before being entered on the cash book, the full distribution being shown there, as this forms the basis of charges against each building. Sometimes the rent accounts contain a General Expense account, to which are charged such items as salaries of collectors, maintenance of horses, buggies, etc. Such an account, however, usually belongs in the general ledger, where it shows the expenses incurred in order to collect the rents or to earn the rent commissions shown in credit accounts on the general ledger.