Online rent payments services

[Jason Bowles]

Many of the online rent payment services do not automatically apply late fees to monthly rents. Because of that, one-time payment requests for the late fee must be manually added once the grace period has ended. Now there’s two separate payments due from the tenant from which they can select only the rent and skip the late fee.

My questions:

1) are there comparable low/no cost services that include the ability to schedule late fees when applicable also requiring the fee to be paid simultaneously with the rent?

2) if on a brief vacation (or otherwise distracted from rental business) when the late fee becomes due, how do you get your late fee when you’re unable to quickly create a one-time payment so the tenant has both rent and fees due in their online account? My attorney has advised me to never accept anything resembling a partial payment including due late fees (he says the state of Tennessee is odd about partial payments). I’ve gone so far as to return money orders to tenants who do not include their late fees (only in the rare case they are uncooperative about quickly paying the fee). I’d rather have the option to reduce or otherwise modify an automatically required fee than to manually create one when it’s due.

Hope that makes sense

Regards,

Jason