Rent collection apps and tools?

[Brandon Jividen]

Hello what are the best tools to collect rent electronically? I’ve been thinking about trying cozy but curious if there is a better app or website.

[Dan Perrott]

@Brandon Jividen I set up a clearing account at a local bank and all of the tenants can go into the bank to make a deposit or set up direct deposit (transfer) into the account.  This is a no cost solution.  If you allowed debit/credit payments through a service, a % may be taken from the deposit. 

[Myisha Williams]

Hi,

Zillow has a online rent payment system. it is free and you can do tenant applicant screening too for $29. The rent payment goes straight to your bank account with in 2-5 business days and you get a notification when the tenant pays.

I hope this helps :)

[Chris R.]

Hi Dan, I’ve been using Cozy for about 6 mo and it’s nice for keeping things organized in terms of rent collection, vacancy listings, and expenses. The free version takes until the 10th of the month to deposit to you or for $3 or so it will deposit instantly. It will automatically assess late fees which is nice if you give it a date to trigger. It’s also very customizable if you want to be flexible upon move in. For example our most recent tenant was able to give us the deposit and first week’s rent up front and then she was going to stagger the balance the remaining three weeks this month.  I was able to set amounts and due dates and it automatically sends due reminders to her so I don’t have to.  I’ve also used their listing service which broadcasts to a number of national real estate sites.  I’m happy so far, hope this helps. 

[Troy Zsofka]

I highly recommend Buildium, but it's much more than electronic rent collection.

The syndicated listings is super helpful. Once I have the description and pictures in the system, I can list the property in a couple mouse clicks and it goes to pretty much every rental site there is. Still have to do craigslist manually though :(

Buildium also replaces Quickbooks with a very decent bookkeeping system and fairly robust reporting capabilities.

As far as the rent collection, the tenants can set it up be a one-time payment or to recur monthly, weekly, bi-weekly, etc. They can also pay rent with a credit card. The EFT from bank account is $0.50 per transaction, the credit card is 2.75%. You can set it up that the tenants pay the fee, or that you do. I have it set so that I pay the 50 cents if they use a bank account, but they pay the 2.75% if they use a credit card.

The further beauty of it is that once they make the payment, their lease ledger is credited, and the transaction hits your bank account ledger and P&L (DR cash, CR rental income). You literally don't have to do anything in regards to processing rent payments, but you can see any tenants that haven't paid.

If they don't pay on time (according to the parameters that you set), the late fee gets charged to their account automatically and a rent reminder and late fee notice email goes out to them. You can customize this email however you want, and you can set up another email a certain number of days past-due that will inform them that demand for rent and eviction notices are going to be generated. Once set up, these emails all happen automatically. There's all kinds of versatility in automatic correspondence. I have it set up so that an account statement goes out via email 5 days before rent is due so they get a reminder (why anyone should need a reminder that their rent is coming due is beyond me, but...)

There are all kinds of other features as well. Some of them are additional cost such as electronic leases, mobile inspections, etc. I personally don't use those. I like to go over each provision of the lease with the new tenant, in person, and we only manage properties we own so we don't need the inspection reports.

As a whole, Buildium makes my life a lot easier and I think it's worth every penny.

[Peter M.]

I have an account at a big bank with branches everywhere and I give tenants deposit slips to then transfer the money to my actual operating account. My actual operating account is with a different bank so if a tenant gets wise and tries to deposit small amounts to stave off eviction (never had it happen but you hear all the horror stories on here) I can just close/change the account number and none of my bill pays/mortgage payments get affected.  Tenants that still want to use checks I just mobile deposit. One tenant uses Cozy which is fine, I'm just not a huge fan of waiting until the 10th to get the money but it works well enough. All free.