Collecting rents and utilities

[Fareed R.]

So I rent a sfh to 4 individual people and doing following to collect bills and utilities, any recommendations to make it automated or anything else for making it faster?

Also for the utilities can I charge any extra on top of it or any service fees?

Method for collecting monthly rent:

1) collecting rent and utilities via Venmo, zelle, PayPal depending on what person uses.

2) paying gas, electricity, WiFi, garbage, water etc myself and splitting amongst tenants and adding this to the monthly rent amount.

3) doing all this via excel

4) then going to each individual payment platform and requesting money.

[Mike McCarthy]

@Fareed R. I would recommend changing to a rent payment platform like Cozy or TenantCloud. They set up their bank account to automatically withdraw monthly and no one needs to do a thing. It makes my life easy and my tenants as well - especially those who tend to forget about the first of the month.

As far as utilities, I’d recommend moving to a fixed cost for utilities per month. Average out all the utilities over the year and charge the $100 or $120 or whatever it is each month. It’s due as part of the rent and there are no spreadsheets.

If you really want, you can write up your lease as these are estimated payments, and will be calculated out everything 3-6 months - and you either pay back the difference or they or you. Might be more work than it’s worth though.