A check figure, not a settlement statement. Proration is set by your contract and worked out by the settlement agent, escrow officer or closing attorney, and the conventions they use are theirs. This page does the arithmetic from the numbers you type so you can sanity-check a figure before a closing. It is general information, not legal, tax or accounting advice. Tax periods, billing cycles and due dates differ by state and by county, so the dates and the amount are yours to supply: nothing here is assumed or pre-filled.
1. The amount and the dates it covers
In dollars, to the cent, for example 4812.50. The full bill or the full rent, not a share of it.
Both endpoints are counted, so 1 January to 31 December is 365 days in an ordinary year and 366 in a leap year. Take the period from the bill or the lease, not from the calendar year, when the two differ.
2. The closing
Must fall inside the period above.
A term of the contract, not a fact about the calendar. Check which way yours reads.
Nothing you type here is stored or sent anywhere. The numbers are worked out in your browser, so the page works offline.
3. The split
Enter the amount, the two period dates and the closing date.
How the split is worked out
- Actual calendar days. The period is the inclusive count of real dates between the two dates you entered, and the daily rate is the amount divided by that count. A leap day counts as a day.
- The closing day goes to one side only. Whichever side you picked, the other side's run starts the next day, so the two day counts always add up to the days in the period.
- “Per day” is rounded for display. Each side's share is worked out from the unrounded rate, so multiplying the rounded per-day figure by a day count can miss the share shown by up to half a cent for every day in the period. The share is the figure to use.
- The seller's share is rounded, the buyer's is the remainder. The seller's share is worked out from the unrounded daily rate and then rounded to the cent; the buyer gets whatever is left of the amount. Rounding both independently can leave the pair a cent short of the bill, which then would not match the amount being split.
Which side gets the credit, and why it takes two questions
“Paid in advance means credit the seller” only holds for money paid out. For money collected, rent being the ordinary case, advance settlement runs the other way, because the money covering the buyer's days has already been taken in. So the direction takes both answers from box 2, and these are the four cases.
| The amount is | Settled for the whole period? | Credit goes to | Because |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paid out | Yes, paid in full | The seller, the buyer's share | The whole period is paid; the days from the closing on belong to the buyer. |
| Paid out | No, still open | The buyer, the seller's share | The bill covers the whole period; the days up to the closing belong to the seller. |
| Collected | Yes, collected in full | The buyer, the buyer's share | The whole period is collected; the days from the closing on belong to the buyer. |
| Collected | No, nothing yet | The seller, the seller's share | Nothing is collected yet; the days up to the closing belong to the seller. |
What this page does not do
- It does not compute a 30-day-month, 360-day-year split. If your contract or your settlement agent counts every month as 30 days and every year as 360, this page is not computing that. The rules that convention uses for a period that does not start on the first of a month, or that ends on a 31st, differ between the versions that share the name, so printing one of them as “the” answer would put a figure here that another correct method contradicts. If your file uses it, expect the number above to differ and take the settlement agent's figure.
- It does not know your tax period or your due dates. When a property tax bill is issued, what span it covers, and whether it is paid ahead or behind all vary by state and by county. Read them off the bill and type them in.
- It does not look up an amount, a rate or an assessment. Every figure on the page is one you entered.
- It does not handle a part-settled period. Box 2 takes “already paid or collected in full” or “not settled yet”. Where only part of a period has been settled, as with one instalment of a two-instalment bill, run each settled span as its own period.
- It does not handle more than one amount at a time. Taxes, rent, dues and a premium each get their own run.
- It does not decide who owes what. That is your contract, read alongside whatever your closing follows locally. The page splits a period.
Read next
- Closing Disclosure deadline calculator : the federal three-business-day wait that runs before a closing on a consumer mortgage.
- What the Closing Disclosure delivery rule says : the regulation behind that wait, quoted.
- Commission split calculator : what a commission plan leaves you on the same deal.
- All rules explained for agents : the rest of the library.