With all of the electronic banking options these days there is no benefit in taking a lump sum payment.

If you do not do it electronically and use hard copies to mail, yes you should keep proof of mailing it on time. 

Finally you might want to look into any of the several websites that allow landlord to collect money electronically that tracks payment history etc.

Most of my tenants just electronically transfer rents anyway.  

Each month either an electronic transfer gets deposited in my account or a check gets mailed from bank-to-bank.

After looking through the forums here are the options I have been considering, and what concerns me about them:1) Electronic - this concerns me because 2 of the tenants are in their 70s and would never be able to figure this out.

.  :-) .In Texas I have registered electronically with the Justice Courts in the counties where I have property and filing an eviction is relatively painless, even more so for squatters.

If you filed electronically, it could be held back by some verification process, i.e. a background-type audit.Either way, need to find out, and it has nothing to do with the solvency of the government.

Some of my costs are photography, pamphlets, sign placement, utility company marking utility for sign placement, placing it on the electronic lockbox system, I usually do a little bit of landscaping..mulch and flowers, depending on the price point of the property I might also need to pay for staging and professional maid service.  

For less than $50, I bought a battery operated 24 hour "logger" from an electronics supplier, put it in their unit for a day, then plugged it into my computer to print a detailed graph showing the true temperature swings.