I Need An Online Rent Collection Program

[Andy Hughes]

I have 15 units comprised of doubles and a triplex. I am looking for a program which tenants can use to pay their rent online. What programs have people used? What would you recommend?

[Jake Johnson]

@Andy Hughes I recently switched from SparkRent (they shut the doors on everyone starting this month) to Buildium.  I was able to switch over most of my tenants already and receive payments.  You can accept EFT or credit card, you choose how to let them pay.  Buildium is a huge step up from SparkRent and nicely fits the needs of my business which consists of nine properties with ten tenants.  Here is a list of my Pros and Cons so far:

Pros:

• Customer Service is excellent (quick replies)
• Easily accept rent via EFT or CC 
• Online portal for tenants is nice and clean (share lease docs with them)
• Centralized email and regular mail (yes you can have them send letters in the mail $0.80/each. so awesome!)
• Centrally track all your properties and leases in one place (so wonderful)
  
  

Cons:

• I wish the accounting would allow you to expense things to a general account, the way the accounting in Buildium works you need to select a property for each expense.  Sometimes I have expenses that are relative to all properties, like buying an ozone generator.  I don't want to charge that to just one property, but to an Operations account.  I think I will end up adding another property called Operations for stuff like this.  I think in general the accounting portion of the software could be better, but it is good enough for me.