payment methods for tenants

[Brandon Morgan]

Hi all i just recently bought my first rental property and finally have it all rented out! i was wondering what other people use for payment methods. I been using cash app and zelle that art connected to my business checking account. only issue is one of the tenants has been paying weekly but had a death in a family and now has not paid in several weeks. I charged a late fee and told them to just pay the lump sum for the month from now on. I really hope this does not continue to be an issue. hopefully it doesn't escalate where I have to evict. 

[Kevin Sobilo]

@Brandon Morgan, nice to see someone from the same market here!

I do not accept cash app or zelle as those seem better suited for personal transactions than for something like rent payments.

I use apartments.com. It provides basically a tenant portal where you can upload copies of the lease, manage electronic payments, even do other things as well like maintenance requests.

Most tenants pay using secure ACH transfers from their account to mine. It takes a few days for the money to hit my account, but that is a small thing compared to the convenience. ACH transfers are free, but if a tenant wants to pay with a credit card they will get charged a fee. In addition tenants can choose to have their payments reported to a credit bureau to build their credit.

You can also set it up to automatically apply late fees which is nice.

Since its a portal for the tenant, both you and the tenant see a complete accounting of all payments made.

In addition you can use it to collect initial security deposits or to bill the tenant for addition items such as billed back utilities, damages, etc. So, if a tenant broke a window and it cost $300 to replace, you can simply add that bill in apartments.com and that way its all tracked where everyone can see it and track it.