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Free Ohio Security Deposit Itemization (Auto-Calc PDF)

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Deposit In, Deductions Out, Refund Calculated — the itemized written notice an Ohio landlord must deliver under O.R.C. § 5321.16 within thirty days of move-out. It totals your deductions, subtracts them from the deposit, and writes the refund straight into the PDF.

Auto-Calc Refund O.R.C. § 5321.16 30-Day Deadline Free PDF

An Ohio security deposit itemization — also called a deposit disposition or statement of deductions — is the written accounting an Ohio landlord must deliver after a tenant moves out. Under Ohio Revised Code § 5321.16(B), any deduction must be itemized and identified in a written notice delivered together with the amount due within thirty days after termination of the rental agreement and delivery of possession. A landlord who fails to comply faces the tenant recovering the money due plus damages equal to the amount wrongfully withheld — a doubling of the withheld sum — and reasonable attorney’s fees under § 5321.16(C). The generator below does the arithmetic: enter the deposit, any interest, and the line-item deductions, and it totals them, subtracts, and prints the result into a ready-to-send PDF built for Ohio.

An Ohio security deposit itemization does three jobs at once, and Ohio Revised Code § 5321.16 ties all three together. First, it accounts for the deposit. The landlord cannot keep any portion of the deposit without itemizing and identifying each deduction in a written notice, as § 5321.16(B) requires. A bare statement that “deductions were taken for cleaning and damage” does not satisfy the statute; each deduction must stand on its own with a description and an amount so the tenant — and, if it comes to it, a municipal or county court — can test whether the charge is for damage the tenant is liable for or for ordinary wear the landlord may not charge.

Second, it delivers the refund. Section 5321.16(B) requires the landlord to deliver the written notice together with the amount due. The landlord cannot hold the refund hostage while sorting out deductions, then send it later; the notice and the money travel together, and both must reach the tenant within the thirty-day window. Third, it starts — and stops — the statutory clock. The thirty days run from the later of two events: termination of the rental agreement and delivery of possession. Blow the deadline, itemize sloppily, or deduct for ordinary wear, and the landlord exposes the wrongfully withheld portion to the doubling remedy and attorney-fee shift of § 5321.16(C). The form on this page produces the written notice, does the arithmetic, and prints the Ohio statutory references so the mechanics are handled; the rest of this guide walks through what Ohio law actually requires.

Ohio’s security deposit rules live in a single, compact statute: Ohio Revised Code § 5321.16, part of the Landlords and Tenants chapter (Chapter 5321). It is short, but every clause matters, and Ohio courts have built a substantial body of case law on top of it. Three subsections carry the weight.

§ 5321.16(A) — interest on larger, longer-held deposits

Subsection (A) requires interest only in a specific situation: where the security deposit exceeds fifty dollars or one month’s periodic rent, whichever is greater, and the tenant remains in possession for six months or more. In that case the landlord must pay five percent per year simple interest, computed on the amount of the deposit that exceeds the fifty-dollar-or-one-month threshold. The interest accrues and is payable to the tenant annually and upon termination of the tenancy. A deposit of one month’s rent or less, or a tenancy shorter than six months, carries no interest obligation. Because the interest is legally the tenant’s money, it is added to the deposit before deductions are subtracted, and the form below has a field for it.

§ 5321.16(B) — the itemized notice and the thirty-day deadline

Subsection (B) is the heart of the statute. It provides that “any deduction from the security deposit shall be itemized and identified by the landlord in a written notice delivered to the tenant together with the amount due, within thirty days after termination of the rental agreement and delivery of possession.” It further requires that the tenant “provide the landlord in writing with a forwarding address or new address to which the written notice and amount due from the landlord may be sent.” And it warns that a tenant who fails to provide that written address “shall not be entitled to damages or attorneys fees under division (C) of this section.” Read together, (B) sets the deadline, the itemization requirement, the joint delivery of notice-plus-money, and the tenant’s written-address precondition to the penalty remedy.

§ 5321.16(C) — the wrongful-withholding remedy

Subsection (C) supplies the teeth: “if the landlord fails to comply with division (B) of this section, the tenant may recover the property and money due him, together with damages in an amount equal to the amount wrongfully withheld, and reasonable attorneys fees.” The phrase “damages in an amount equal to the amount wrongfully withheld” is what practitioners loosely call Ohio’s “double damages” rule: the tenant recovers the wrongfully withheld amount itself, plus a matching amount as statutory damages, effectively doubling the sum, and the landlord also pays the tenant’s reasonable attorney’s fees. Ohio’s leading case, Smith v. Padgett (1987), 32 Ohio St.3d 344, holds that the double-damages and attorney-fee remedy applies to the amount wrongfully withheld even where some deductions were proper — the landlord does not escape the penalty on the bad portion just because part of the retention was justified.

The thirty-day clock

Ohio gives the landlord thirty days, and the clock starts from the later of two events under § 5321.16(B): termination of the rental agreement and delivery of possession. In most move-outs those coincide, but not always. If a fixed-term lease ends on the last day of the month but the tenant hands back the keys three days early, possession was delivered first and the agreement terminated later, so the clock runs from the lease-end date. If the tenant holds over past the lease term and surrenders possession late, the clock runs from the surrender of possession. Document the surrender date carefully — a dated key handover, a final walk-through, or a written acknowledgment — because the thirty-day count depends on it.

Within those thirty days the landlord must do both things: deliver the itemized written notice, and deliver the amount due. Sending an itemization on day twenty and the refund check on day forty is not compliance; § 5321.16(B) requires them together. Ohio counts calendar days, and courts have treated the deadline strictly.

The written forwarding-address precondition

Ohio adds a wrinkle other states omit. The tenant must give the landlord a written forwarding or new address. If the tenant never does, § 5321.16(B) provides the tenant “shall not be entitled to damages or attorneys fees under division (C).” That does not erase the landlord’s duty to return the deposit — the refund is still owed — but it removes the doubling penalty and fee shift if the landlord falls short. From the tenant’s side, the lesson is blunt: put the forwarding address in writing, keep proof, and do it at or before move-out. From the landlord’s side, the safest course is to deliver the statement and refund to the best address available even when no written forwarding address was given, because the underlying refund obligation survives.

Method of delivery

Section 5321.16 does not prescribe a single delivery method, but the practical standard is certified mail with return receipt requested to the tenant’s written forwarding address, because it produces proof the notice and refund were sent within the window. First-class mail is permissible but leaves no delivery record; personal delivery works if the tenant acknowledges receipt. Whatever the method, keep a copy of the statement, the check or record of payment, and the mailing proof in the tenant’s file — those documents are the landlord’s defense if the tenant later claims the deposit was wrongfully withheld.

Fill in the parties, the deposit and any § 5321.16(A) interest, and one line for each deduction. As you type, the calculator at the bottom updates in real time; when you click generate, the same totals are written into a formatted PDF you can print, sign, and mail. Every field below reaches the document, and the refund or balance owed is computed for you.

Ohio Revised Code § 5321.16(B) authorizes only two kinds of deduction: past-due rent, and the cost of damage the tenant is liable for that is beyond ordinary wear and tear. Everything hinges on the line between damage and ordinary wear. The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development describes ordinary wear and tear as the deterioration that results from the intended, ordinary use of a dwelling — the aging that happens even when a tenant is careful. Damage, by contrast, is harm caused by negligence, carelessness, accident, or abuse. Only damage, plus unpaid rent, may come out of an Ohio deposit.

Ohio courts have been notably firm on one point: automatic, non-refundable cleaning or carpet-cleaning charges imposed regardless of the unit’s actual condition are not lawful deductions. A deduction must respond to a real condition — damage or a filthy state beyond ordinary wear — not a boilerplate lease clause that bills every departing tenant a fixed fee. A useful test is to ask whether the condition came from living in the unit or from misusing it. Carpet flattened along the path from the door to the sofa is wear; the same carpet with a bleach stain or pet-urine saturation is damage. Many Ohio landlords also apply HUD’s life-expectancy idea: if a carpet’s useful life is seven years and the tenant lived there five, the landlord cannot bill for a brand-new carpet, because most of that value was already used up by ordinary aging. When in doubt, deduct conservatively and document thoroughly.

It helps to watch the equation run once with real numbers. Suppose a Columbus tenant paid a security deposit of fifteen hundred dollars on a unit renting for eleven hundred dollars a month, and stayed fourteen months. Because the deposit exceeds one month’s rent and the tenancy ran past six months, § 5321.16(A) requires five percent annual interest on the excess above one month’s rent — here, on four hundred dollars — which over the tenancy came to roughly twenty-two dollars and fifty cents. The starting pool the landlord accounts for is therefore fifteen hundred twenty-two dollars and fifty cents: the deposit plus the interest, because the interest is legally the tenant’s money too.

At move-out the landlord inspects against the move-in checklist and finds three chargeable items. The tenant left one month of rent unpaid, pegged by the lease at nine hundred fifty dollars. A dog left urine damage that required professional carpet treatment, invoiced at two hundred eighty dollars. And a bedroom wall had several fist-sized holes that cost one hundred twenty dollars to patch and repaint. Faded paint elsewhere and a worn path in the hallway carpet were left off the list entirely, because those are ordinary wear and charging for them would expose the whole retention to the § 5321.16(C) penalty.

The three legitimate deductions total thirteen hundred fifty dollars. Subtracting that from the starting pool of fifteen hundred twenty-two dollars and fifty cents leaves a refund of one hundred seventy-two dollars and fifty cents owed back to the tenant, which must be mailed with the itemized notice within thirty days. Had the damage been worse — say a ruined subfloor pushing deductions past sixteen hundred dollars — the equation would have gone negative, and the statement would instead show a balance the tenant owes, with the same line-item detail and receipts behind it. The generator above produces exactly this arithmetic either way and prints the matching figures into the PDF so the page and the document never disagree.

Two refinements separate a rushed Ohio itemization from a defensible one. The first is deposit interest under § 5321.16(A). Unlike states that require interest on every deposit, Ohio conditions it on two facts: the deposit must exceed fifty dollars or one month’s rent, whichever is greater, and the tenant must stay six months or longer. When both are true, five percent annual simple interest accrues on the excess above that threshold and is payable to the tenant. Forgetting owed interest is not a rounding error — it is money the tenant is entitled to, and withholding it can itself be part of a wrongful-withholding claim. If interest applies, enter it in the interest field so the calculator folds it into the starting pool before deductions.

The second refinement is prorating for an item’s age. An Ohio landlord cannot bill a departing tenant the full price of a brand-new replacement for something already partway through its useful life. HUD’s life-expectancy guidance is the common reference: interior paint often treated as lasting two or three years, plush carpet roughly five to seven, larger appliances closer to ten. If a carpet with a seven-year life is damaged after five years of tenancy, only the remaining fraction of its value is fairly chargeable, not a whole new carpet. Applying that proration signals good faith, keeps the deduction proportionate, and is far easier to defend if the tenant challenges the amount in an Ohio municipal or county court.

An Ohio tenant who believes the itemization is wrong or the deposit was kept without cause is not without recourse. The usual forum is small claims court — Ohio municipal and county courts hear deposit disputes routinely, up to the small-claims jurisdictional limit, and a tenant does not need a lawyer to file. What raises the stakes for a careless landlord is § 5321.16(C): the tenant may recover the money due, plus damages equal to the amount wrongfully withheld, plus reasonable attorney’s fees.

That doubling-and-fees remedy is powerful but bounded. It attaches to the amount wrongfully withheld, not to the entire deposit, so a landlord who properly deducts nine hundred dollars and improperly keeps another two hundred faces the penalty only on the two hundred. Under Smith v. Padgett, however, the landlord does not avoid the penalty on the wrongful portion merely because other deductions were valid. And the remedy is gated by the tenant’s own compliance: § 5321.16(B) denies § 5321.16(C) damages and fees to a tenant who never gave a written forwarding address, even though the refund itself remains owed. Because the exact contours turn on Ohio case law, a tenant with a substantial dispute — or a landlord facing one — should confirm the current rule on our Ohio landlord-tenant deposit page and consider counsel.

Most Ohio deposit disputes trace back to a short list of avoidable errors. Reviewing them before you mail the statement is the cheapest insurance available.

The interest calculation trips up more Ohio landlords than any other part of the statute, because it applies only in a narrow window and is computed on a slice of the deposit rather than the whole. Work through it in three questions. First, does the deposit exceed the threshold? Section 5321.16(A) sets the threshold at fifty dollars or one month’s periodic rent, whichever is greater. On a unit renting for eleven hundred dollars a month, the threshold is eleven hundred dollars, so a deposit of eleven hundred dollars or less earns no interest at all; only the portion above eleven hundred dollars qualifies. Second, did the tenancy last six months or more? A tenant who leaves at month five earns nothing under (A), no matter how large the deposit. Third, compute five percent per year on the qualifying excess.

Take a concrete case. The deposit is fifteen hundred dollars on an eleven-hundred-dollar unit, and the tenant stays fourteen months. The qualifying excess is four hundred dollars — the amount above one month’s rent. Five percent of four hundred dollars is twenty dollars per year, or roughly one dollar and sixty-seven cents per month; over fourteen months the accrued interest is about twenty-three dollars, which many landlords round to a clean figure and pay with the refund. Note two subtleties Ohio landlords miss: the statute says the interest is payable to the tenant annually during a long tenancy as well as at termination, so a multi-year tenant may be owed interest that was never paid along the way; and the interest is computed only on the excess above the threshold, never on the entire deposit. Entering the wrong interest figure — or forgetting it entirely on a qualifying deposit — can itself become part of a wrongful-withholding claim, because unpaid interest is money the tenant is entitled to under § 5321.16(A).

When a deposit itemization goes wrong, the dispute almost always lands in an Ohio municipal or county court, most often in the small-claims division. Ohio’s small-claims jurisdiction runs up to six thousand dollars, which comfortably covers most deposit disputes even after the § 5321.16(C) doubling and fees are added. The tenant files where the property sits or where the landlord can be served, pays a modest filing fee, and appears without a lawyer; the case is usually heard within a couple of months by a magistrate. Understanding how these hearings actually run tells a landlord exactly what the itemized statement has to prove.

What the tenant must show

The tenant typically shows that a deposit was paid, that the tenancy ended and possession was delivered, that a written forwarding address was given, and that the landlord either failed to deliver a compliant itemized notice within thirty days or deducted for something Ohio law does not allow. The written forwarding address is pivotal: without it, the tenant may still recover the refund but loses the § 5321.16(C) doubling and attorney-fee remedy, so a landlord facing a tenant who never put an address in writing has a strong partial defense to the penalty even on a late statement.

What the landlord must show

The landlord defends by producing the itemized written notice, proof it was mailed with the refund within thirty days, and evidence that each deduction was for real damage or past-due rent rather than ordinary wear. This is where documentation wins or loses the case. A dated move-in checklist paired with dated move-out photographs from the same angles, vendor invoices for the repairs, and a certified-mail receipt showing timely delivery will usually carry the day. A landlord who arrives with a lump-sum “cleaning and damage” figure, no photographs, and no receipts is the landlord who pays double plus the tenant’s attorney’s fees. Because the burden of justifying each deduction falls on the landlord, the itemized statement this page generates should always travel with its supporting paper attached.

Real move-outs are rarely tidy, and a few recurring situations deserve their own note under Ohio law. Joint tenants and roommates: where several tenants signed one lease and paid one deposit, the deposit is generally treated as a single fund tied to the tenancy, not divided per person. The landlord issues one itemized statement and one refund, usually payable to the tenants jointly or to the person the lease or a written agreement designates, and mails it to the written forwarding address provided. Internal disagreements among roommates about who gets what share of the refund are the tenants’ problem to sort out, not the landlord’s; the landlord’s duty is to account for the whole deposit correctly and deliver it on time.

Early departure and holdover: when one tenant leaves early but others remain, the tenancy has not ended, so the thirty-day clock has not started; the deposit stays with the ongoing tenancy until the last tenant delivers possession. When a tenant holds over past the lease term, possession is delivered late, and the clock runs from that later surrender date. Deductions that outrun the deposit: if damage and past-due rent exceed the deposit and any interest, the statement shows a balance owed by the tenant, and the landlord may pursue that balance as an ordinary debt — but the landlord still must deliver the itemized statement within thirty days, because § 5321.16(B) governs the accounting regardless of whether money flows back to the tenant. Assignment and sale of the property: a new owner who takes over an occupied rental generally steps into the prior owner’s deposit obligations, so a landlord buying a building should confirm in writing that the deposits were transferred and account for them at move-out even though the landlord did not originally collect them.

Because the landlord carries the burden of justifying every deduction, the itemized statement is only as strong as the file behind it. A defensible Ohio deposit file has five things. A signed move-in condition checklist establishes the baseline — the condition the unit was in when the tenant took possession — so that any move-out difference can be attributed to the tenancy. Dated move-out photographs taken from the same vantage points as the move-in record turn a contested judgment call into a visible comparison. Vendor invoices and receipts prove both that the work was done and what it reasonably cost, which is what keeps a deduction from looking like an invented number. Proof of timely, addressed delivery — a certified-mail receipt to the written forwarding address, dated within thirty days — defeats the most common tenant argument, that the statement was late or never arrived. And a copy of the signed statement itself closes the loop.

Keep that packet for at least a few years after move-out; Ohio’s general statute of limitations for written-contract and statutory claims gives a tenant a long runway to sue, and the file is the landlord’s entire defense. Pair the statement with our move-in inspection checklist at the start of every tenancy so the baseline exists before you ever need it, and screen applicants carefully with a thorough rental application so the tenant who eventually moves out is one who respected the property in the first place. Good documentation is not paperwork for its own sake; in an Ohio deposit hearing, it is the difference between keeping a lawful deduction and paying double for an unproven one.

The security deposit statute does not operate in a vacuum; it sits inside Ohio’s broader Landlords and Tenants Act, and a few neighboring rules shape how deposit disputes resolve. The rent-escrow remedy. Ohio Revised Code § 5321.07 lets a tenant who has given the landlord written notice of a serious habitability problem deposit rent with the clerk of the municipal or county court until repairs are made. A landlord cannot retaliate against that lawful conduct by inventing deposit deductions at move-out; § 5321.02 prohibits retaliatory conduct, and a deduction that looks like payback for a rent-escrow action or a code complaint invites both a wrongful-withholding claim and a separate retaliation claim. When you itemize, deduct only for genuine damage and past-due rent, never as leverage over a habitability dispute.

The landlord’s own habitability duties. Section 5321.04 obligates the landlord to keep the premises fit and habitable and to make necessary repairs. A landlord cannot shift the cost of meeting those baseline duties onto the departing tenant’s deposit. Repairing a failing furnace, fixing a leaking roof, or bringing wiring up to code are the landlord’s obligations, not tenant damage, and charging them to the deposit is a classic wrongful withholding. The deposit answers only for what the tenant broke beyond ordinary wear or the rent the tenant did not pay.

No statewide rent control. Ohio has no statewide rent control, and state law limits local rent regulation, so the deposit rules in § 5321.16 apply uniformly across Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Toledo, Dayton, Akron, and the rest of the state without the deposit-cap or interest-rate overlays some other states’ cities impose. That uniformity is a convenience, but it does not lower the bar: the thirty-day deadline, the itemization requirement, the written-forwarding-address rule, and the double-damages-plus-fees penalty are the same in every Ohio jurisdiction. A landlord operating in several Ohio cities can use one compliant process everywhere, and this generator produces the same statute-anchored statement regardless of which Ohio county the property sits in. For the full statewide picture, the Ohio deposit-law guide lays out how § 5321.16 fits alongside these neighboring protections.

• Photograph at move-in and move-out. Dated photos next to the inspection checklist turn “your word against mine” into documented fact.
• Itemize line by line. One description and one amount per deduction, never a single lump sum — that is what § 5321.16(B) demands.
• Deduct only for damage or past-due rent. Ordinary wear and automatic flat fees are off-limits in Ohio.
• Attach every receipt. If a vendor did the work, include the invoice; if you did it yourself, note materials and reasonable labor.
• Add § 5321.16(A) interest if it applies. On a qualifying deposit held six months or more, that interest is the tenant’s money.
• Beat the thirty-day deadline. Mail the notice and the refund together, by certified mail, with proof retained.
• Keep a copy. Retain the signed statement, the receipts, and the delivery proof in the tenant’s file.

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