All Forum Posts by: Kayla W.

Hey @Mike S.! 

Happy to follow up on your questions about how the improved ACH processing times will affect Cozy's ACH payment turnaround.

Your bank is correct that NACHA, the governing body that sets the rules for ACH payments, is rolling out one day ACH payments in phases, and there's still another stage to go before that process is complete. Here's more info about the third phase, which should be completed in March 2018:

https://www.nacha.org/rules/same-day-ach-moving-payments-faster-phase-3

Once US banks have all transitioned to this process, Cozy's payment processor, Stripe, should also ideally be able to adjust to these quicker processing times, but they haven't yet laid out a timeline for how the NACHA changes will change their processing. 

@Ewa Reza Tenants can turn on the Rent Reporting feature by going to their Settings menu in the top corner of their account. From there they'll just need to confirm their details to activate this reporting option for past and future payments sent through Cozy.

Hi @Jay Patel! Banks have three business days to make funds available, so almost all debit failures due to insufficient funds (or stopped payments, account freezes, etc.) will be reported to our payment processor by the tenant's bank by the morning of the 4th business day. That means we would likely notify you of the ACH payment attempt failing on the 3rd or early on the 4th business day of the transaction.

Hey @Joe Splitrock, great question! You're correct that the free ACH payment option takes about 5 business days from the time the payment is scheduled to the time it posts to your bank account. Of these 5 days, it usually takes about 3 business days for the payment processor to be sure that the tenant's withdrawal didn't fail (banks have 3 business days to make funds available), and then an additional 2 business days for that payment to deposit and post to you. 

I totally understand that five business days is longer than ideal for many landlords, but unfortunately this is the standard that is put in place by the ACH payment processing network, and we don't have any way to control that. The ACH network is what allows us to provide free payments to our customers. The good news is that the ACH network is working to improve their standards for processing times. Sometime in the next 1-2 years, they will have shortened this time frame drastically. Needless to say, we are all very excited for those changes to be enacted!

For a better understanding of the timeline of how ACH payments work in general, you can reference their website: https://www.nacha.org/ach-network

Hey @Andre P.! This is Kayla from Cozy's support team. I just wanted to clarify that Cozy does allow renters to activate rent reporting to Experian's Rent Bureau, but we only report payments for tenants who choose to activate this option. This only reports successfully processed payments, so the tradeline would simply show "No Activity" for months where your tenants didn't send payments.

Sure thing, @Bryce Peterson! I do know that it's not on our short-term roadmap at the moment, but I'll bring it up with our product development team!

@Bryce Peterson Hi, this is Kayla from Cozy's support team! I wanted to clarify for people new to Cozy that we don't currently support setting up a separate receiving account for utilities, but you can designate a separate receiving account for security deposits. 

It's neat to hear all about how you've been managing collecting utility payments--sounds like you've got your system down!

Hi @Jeremy Paschedag! This is Kayla from Cozy--

You're absolutely right that tenants can't make payments past the set end date on a lease (to prevent sending payments after they've moved out). 

I did want to let you know that after a lease has ended, you can still view the ended lease, and then edit the end date to extend the lease end date out further so that you don't have to add all of your tenant's information again and all your transaction history is consolidated. Then, your tenant will just need to set up their payments to continue through the new end date. 

I hope that shortcut helps! 

Hi @Bryan O.! No problem! Cozy used to set up payments this way, but we moved away from this model after it was causing more problems than it solved. For instance, three tenants paying $333.33 towards a $1,000 monthly rent wouldn't send to the landlord because it was $0.01 short. Additionally, many landlords requested that we process payments as they came in, so if one roommate wanted to pay on the 20th, and one wanted to pay on the 30th, they'd get part of the payment early. 

As such, we currently don't have the option to combine all of your tenants' payments into one deposit, and it's not something that we have on our roadmap. 

@Joseph Cornwell This is Kayla, from Cozy's support team. I know you were looking for some input on other landlords’ experiences with Cozy, so I’ll leave that part up to them and answer a couple of your questions here about our screening process. Cozy’s application isn’t currently customizable, although you could request supplemental information outside of Cozy as well. Our service doesn’t verify employment or references, but we do ask applicant for contact information for references. I’ll let our users fill you in with their thoughts on the process itself and their experiences with Cozy!