How best to encourage online rent payments?

[Greg Hoffmann]

Hi BP!

New self managing landlord here. I'm going to be signing up with Cozy/Apartments.com and love the idea of tenants paying online. In CA we can't mandate they do so, so how best to encourage them to do so?  Can there be a fee for not using online payment? Or a credit for using online payment? I also want to make sure this doesn't complicate my bookkeeping too much.

Thanks for you advice!

[Joe Splitrock]

Originally posted by @Greg Hoffmann:

Hi BP!

New self managing landlord here. I'm going to be signing up with Cozy/Apartments.com and love the idea of tenants paying online. In CA we can't mandate they do so, so how best to encourage them to do so?  Can there be a fee for not using online payment? Or a credit for using online payment? I also want to make sure this doesn't complicate my bookkeeping too much.

Thanks for you advice!

 You cannot charge a fee for using non-online, but you can offer a discount for using online rent payment. Offer a $5 or $10 discount for using online rent payment. Think of it this way, if you charge $2500 rent, just change it to $2510 and offer $10 off for online rent payment. In other words, it isn't coming out of your pocket.