You have solid tenants in your properties and you enjoy being a landlord. Although you had success filling up your properties, you don’t want to rest on your laurels. By seeking new ways to enhance your property management skills, you can help to set yourself up for further success and simultaneously improve your work-life balance that may have been neglected. No one wants to spend hours of their day traveling to their many properties in order to collect rent in person. With the modern family’s busy schedule, coordinating in-person payment times is a difficult prospect. Worst case scenario, you chase around payments and deal with more frustration than you need to. These three rent payment collection methods will save you great time and energy, allowing you to focus on other important aspects of your property management business.
1. Electronic payment
One of the easiest methods for collecting rent payments is accepting electronic payments. Most people these days don’t deal with checks on a regular basis, so keeping a checkbook around solely for rent is an inconvenience. Electronic payment systems cut down on problems such as checks getting lost in the mail and dealing with checks filled out incorrectly. With some electronic payment systems, tenants can use debit cards and credit cards to make their rent payments at their convenience. You pay a fee for the service, but you also save time not having to deposit checks. Some electronic payment services also allow your tenants to send electronic checks instead of physical checks.
2. Billpay
If you don’t want to utilize an electronic payment system, talk to your tenants about setting up bill pay through their banks. Many banks utilize a bill pay system that transfers money from the tenant’s account to your account. If you share a bank with the tenant, the bank may deposit it directly into your account. Otherwise, the bank cuts a check so you don’t have to worry about insufficient funds. Banks with reputable online banking features make it easy for tenants to set up bill payments. If you want to make it easier, talk to the bank to get yourself set up in their system as a payable company.
3. Recurring payment
Electronic payments and bill pay both feature the option to set up recurring payments. There are plenty of benefits that come from setting up recurring options. The major benefit is making sure that your tenant never misses a rental payment. Automatic recurring payments take the money directly out of the account without any outside intervention. If an automatic payment doesn’t process correctly, you know it within a few days of the automatic payment date, instead of wondering if the tenant forgot to send the rent payment.
Accepting rental payments is an integral part of being a landlord. When you increase the efficiency of your rental collection methods, you set up a foundation to also increase the quality of your business operations. When you have efficient processes, you decrease the amount of time you spend collecting rent, which allows you to have more of your time to enjoy for yourself. You’ll also be able to spend more time bettering your business and rental properties, which could boost your income higher than ever before.
