i had a thread on this a few months ago, but it's official now. the Intuit is shutting down and everyone has to move to their new system - merchant payment service.
http://support.quickbooks.intuit.com/support/artic...
i spent 30 mins with the rep on the phone and here are the details as I SEE THEM:
- tenants can't just log in and pay unless they receive an invoice that has a clickable link
- you can't send an invoice with a link if you do not have quickbooks (online or desktop)
- quickbooks costs $13 per month
- $.50 per transaction still applies.
i am upset because not only i have to learn quickbooks, but because the tenants have to get a clickable link from me. as of now, i NEVER send out invoices. . in addition, there;s a $13 per month charge.
Like you guys, I received the notice that IPN is shutting down and have been researching on different services to use. I'm a commercial landlord and rent to businesses. Some of the businesses who are regional or national will send me checks from their corporate office. However, I have other businesses who are mom&pops and I have been using IPN for them. To add my experience in speaking with Intuit CSR:
- Intuit Payment Network is completely going away
- The last date to submit a request for payment is 5/31. It is completely shutting down 6/30.
- To use their new service einvoice, you have to have either Quickbooks Online or Quickbooks Desktop 2015/2016. Any earlier version of Quickbooks will not have the einvoice feature (I happen to use 2014)
- Einvoicing will not allow you send people money, only receive. Unfortunately I used IPN to sent money to some vendors/contractors.
- While they don't admit it, the trend is moving to Online and likely fading out Desktop.
This is my research into potential replacements (research only, no actual experience):
DWOLLA - looked promising, very similar to IPN, however recently got fined for lacking proper security measures. To sign up with them requires both myself and tenant submit sensitive information like SSN/TIN and bank/routing. This was a deal breaker.
Erentpayment - $3 per transfer. Too expensive. Loads of other features I don't use. I rather just have tenants mail me a check in that regards.
Cozy.co - Too new. Still seem to be working out kinks. ACH transfer time too slow. I'll give them a few years to standardize and mature.
As I have commercial tenants, most of the sites set up for residential tenants don't really work for me. I don't need their credit/background checks, leases, etc. I just need a way for ACH payment. I looked into Chase in the past, and it seemed to have a limit (I remember $5000). Unfortunately, some of my tenant's rent are above this.
Alas, I decided to just shell out the money to update to Quickbooks Desktop 2016 to use their einvoicing. I am certainly aware that in 2-3 years, Intuit is somehow going to make me pay again. Hopefully by that time, there will be a better viable option to switch to.
Of note:
If anyone is wondering, Quickbooks Online will allow one Tax ID Number per account. That means if you want to maintain separate books and have 2 LLC's, you need 2 accounts. Yes, that's a ripoff. That's why I'm sticking with the Desktop, which is 1 user license, but with it, I can create as many accounts/files as I want. But again, wouldn't be surprised if in 2-3 years, they are discontinuing desktop support.
ok, i think i have the answer for this (at least for me).
i just spend 1 hr with Chase and here's what i found:
- no fee business account if you have over $1,500 in there.
- checking good for 200 transactions per month
- max cash deposits is 7.5k
- Chase Quickpay allows anyone to pay if you or they have chase account
- quickpay no limit for receiving money
- they also have Deposit cards that cost nothing and i can give out for them to deposit
- quickpay works by them paying to an Email, like Intuit used to
https://www.chase.com/business-banking/business-ch...
i will be opening an account with them next week. i used to have an account with them years ago but didn't like that they charged monthly fees.
sorry cozy, but i will go to great lengths to make it easier on me for the future. keeping it simple in 2016 is a good thing, that wins you customers. the last thing i have time for is entering tenants' info and waiting for them to "accept" the invitation from cozy. that's just crazy.
anyway, will update it again when i try a few transactions.
George, I have BIG interest in your pain points! Cozy follows a industry standard with the invitation and from what I read they have 120,000 renters who made the on boarding step you see as too difficult. George, would it be easier if you could on board the tenant yourself?
not sure what that "invitation industry standard" is, but Intuit didn't have it. William paid didn't have it. Quick pay doesn't have it.
I dont want to feel like i am in Linkedin where people "send an invite and i ignore it cause it's a nuisance". I do NOT want to hear "oh, i never go an invite, so I never paid my rent.
with the new system i am starting with, QuickPay, i am sending them an email, followed up with a text so they open that email and again 5 days before rent is due i will text them. the email will say "we are changing to quickpay, forget intuit, go here and pay". and in that letter, i have videos of how to sign up, i have a PDF they can print, and i have links to the people that already have chase or a new to chase.
This way, i am not "extending my hand to shake someone's hand if there's no hand on the other side".
is that helpful?
All of what you wrote is helpful George, Thank-you! Solution architects need all the feedback we can get!
that's no problem at all. and honestly.... that's the main reason i do this, i want companies to succeed and to be enjoyable for us, the users.
let me know if i can answer specific questions, i am sure i didn't explain it the way you wanted it, but i can try again.
As a Landlord, I noticed the motivation with a brand new tenant is higher since they want the relationship to start out in a good way. This on boarding feature of send the invitation to the tenant seems to work well in this use case. However, some older tenants are not motivated to change anything, they see almost anything a landlord asks as a hassle and they resists efforts of compliance, or ignore requests. And in this use case the on boarding for ACH payments should have an alternative "white gloves" feature. Therefore I will build one!
Well, I went ahead and purchased QB Pro 2016- I have already sent out invoices via IPN for April's rent but wanted to get everything in place for the new payment method for May's rent, that way we have a little time to work out any issues before IPN is shut down.
I will be sending out invoices through QB for the first time this month and will keep you posted if anyone is interested.
So far, I am very annoyed that if my tenant has an issue paying, they have to call me and I have to call Intuit instead of being able to call them directly like they could through IPN. I would say 95% of my past issues were on the tenant side of the transaction- cell phones timed out during payment processing or they had multiple accounts and selected the wrong one- so I am not sure how I would be able to help them with these things going forward. I sent myself an invoice and paid it so that I could walk my tenants through the process if needed, and the interface is pretty easy to use and self explanatory.
My other issue with the new set up is we no longer have the ability to have a "Pay me" button through Intuit on our website. I had one before, some tenants used it to pay when they couldn't find the e mail or if they wanted to pay a different amount, but I mostly used it when collecting app fees.
As a Landlord, I noticed the motivation with a brand new tenant is higher since they want the relationship to start out in a good way. This on boarding feature of send the invitation to the tenant seems to work well in this use case. However, some older tenants are not motivated to change anything, they see almost anything a landlord asks as a hassle and they resists efforts of compliance, or ignore requests. And in this use case the on boarding for ACH payments should have an alternative "white gloves" feature. Therefore I will build one!
you are EXACTLY right. the new tenant wants the house and they will do whatever onboarding i tell them to do just to get in.
once they are in, anything new is "hard". thanks for understanding AND listening
Well, I went ahead and purchased QB Pro 2016- I have already sent out invoices via IPN for April's rent but wanted to get everything in place for the new payment method for May's rent, that way we have a little time to work out any issues before IPN is shut down.
I will be sending out invoices through QB for the first time this month and will keep you posted
so now you have to play IT support? omg!
I have been trying to make the switch to online payments recently and have already been through the shut down of Williampaid and now IPN. Here is my experience with some of the alternatives that have been mentioned.
Chase Quickpay (free, but at least one party must bank with Chase):
I have some tenants that have Chase accounts that use quick pay and it works great. I have thought about getting a Chase account myself so that I can use it with tenants that don't have Chase accounts, however one potential issue for using it for all of my rent payments is that their bank must be a part of the clearXchange network. From what I can see this network covers most of the big banks (BoA, Wells Fargo, etc.) however many of my tenants bank with small credit unions who may not be a part of this network. Has anyone who uses Chase Quickpay run into an issue with a tenants bank not participating?
Cozy (free):
I just set up an account with them and set up a dummy "tenant" to see how the experience was for both parties. I thought set up was pretty easy on both ends. To anyone considering this option I would say, do not be put off by previous comments about difficulty of setup.
As a landlord, all you need to enter about the tenant is name, email address, rent amount and choose a date "lease"start and end date or choose month to month. As someone mentioned the "lease" in cozy is just saying when to start and stop payments, I chose month to month even though my lease is for 1 year because most of my tenants end up renewing or going month to month at the end of their lease.
The tenant gets an email invitation with a link and what I felt was a pretty easy process to create a username and password to set up an account. Both parties will need to verify their bank account by verifying two deposit amounts. In my experience the deposits were made almost instantly but the site says it can take up to 3 days, so don't wait until the last day of the month to start the process. You may need to do some hand holding and prodding to get your tenants to complete this step especially if they are new to online payments.
As a tenant I scheduled a payment for the 1st. As a landlord I got an email on the 1st that a payment had been made and the funds actually hit my account on the 7th. For some this delay might not work, but for me it is fine. Since I am still trying to win over tenants to pay rent online I use the date they submit payment as my receive date rather than making them try to account for processing time.
Quickbooks E invoicing ($.50 per transaction plus you need quickbooks):
Since I was already using IPN I tried to use their new service, however the deal breaker for me was that I had to manually create and email an invoice each month. There was a recurring payment option but only for credit card payments that incurred a 3% fee for each payment. The tenants also had to wait to get the email before they could pay rent, they could not just log in and make payment like with IPN.
For me the winner is Cozy, I just hope they stay in business so I'm not doing this again next year.
From what I can see this network covers most of the big banks (BoA, Wells Fargo, etc.) however many of my tenants bank with small credit unions who may not be a part of this network. Has anyone who uses Chase Quickpay run into an issue with a tenants bank not participating?
i do not believe that's true. if the person is banking within the clear xchange system, they dont even have to sign up for chase quickpay - they have the same thing with their bank, not called quickpay, but still payable with an email only.
so, a clear xchange handshake is just faster/easier.
but anyone with a routing number and account number can use chase quickpay. that's the primary reason i got a chase account.
i agree with the rest of your comments.
i just dont see why it's important for Cozy to know when the lease start and end date is AND the name of the tenant... once i saw that, i was turned off and started looking elsewhere.
Auto-pay has issues that should be considered and it effect all service providers:
1) Higher rate of NSF (with hassles an bank charges)
2) Easier to dispute the charge and get the system to reverse the payment by law
When a tenant uses ACH and actively makes the payment each month in the interface, the issues stated above are eliminated almost 98% of the time.
We use payyourrent.com and it is great, can send you and the tenant notifications. And you can make the tenant responsible for the merchant fees on each transaction. Also PayYourRent customer service is great.
Hope this helps.
I think George P. is correct about the tenant not needing to be a member of clearXchange for Quickpay. From Chase's FAQ:
So unless anyone chimes in with an example otherwise, it looks like the QuickPay service will work with any U.S bank.
I'm pretty sure both Quickpay and Cozy offer tenants the option to have the rent automatically deducted every month without having to do anything.
@Justin R. Thank you for mentioning Buildium. Through our tenant portal, tenants can opt to set automatic recurring payments or do it monthly when they get the automated payment reminder from your Buildium account. Let me know if I can be of any help.
i dont think i mentioned credit card payments in my post (lazy to look it up)... I will miss it.
i have two tenants that like to pay with a CC and add fees to their payment. with chase, it's $25 charge per month to accept credit cards. with costco - same thing. paypal - same thing. the min monthly charge is way more than it's worth at this point.
Intuit was great because i just had to click a button within the account to start accepting CC..
i have not been able to find a provider where they can process 2-3 payments per month with a flat 3% fee. i have not looked that hard, but i understand why it would not be worth it to them to offer it for single payments.
so i dont think i can tell people "i accept credit cards" for rent payments in the future.
Like you guys, I received the notice that IPN is shutting down and have been researching on different services to use. I'm a commercial landlord and rent to businesses. Some of the businesses who are regional or national will send me checks from their corporate office. However, I have other businesses who are mom&pops and I have been using IPN for them. To add my experience in speaking with Intuit CSR:
- Intuit Payment Network is completely going away
- The last date to submit a request for payment is 5/31. It is completely shutting down 6/30.
- To use their new service einvoice, you have to have either Quickbooks Online or Quickbooks Desktop 2015/2016. Any earlier version of Quickbooks will not have the einvoice feature (I happen to use 2014)
- Einvoicing will not allow you send people money, only receive. Unfortunately I used IPN to sent money to some vendors/contractors.
- While they don't admit it, the trend is moving to Online and likely fading out Desktop.
This is my research into potential replacements (research only, no actual experience):
DWOLLA - looked promising, very similar to IPN, however recently got fined for lacking proper security measures. To sign up with them requires both myself and tenant submit sensitive information like SSN/TIN and bank/routing. This was a deal breaker.
Erentpayment - $3 per transfer. Too expensive. Loads of other features I don't use. I rather just have tenants mail me a check in that regards.
Cozy.co - Too new. Still seem to be working out kinks. ACH transfer time too slow. I'll give them a few years to standardize and mature.
As I have commercial tenants, most of the sites set up for residential tenants don't really work for me. I don't need their credit/background checks, leases, etc. I just need a way for ACH payment. I looked into Chase in the past, and it seemed to have a limit (I remember $5000). Unfortunately, some of my tenant's rent are above this.
Alas, I decided to just shell out the money to update to Quickbooks Desktop 2016 to use their einvoicing. I am certainly aware that in 2-3 years, Intuit is somehow going to make me pay again. Hopefully by that time, there will be a better viable option to switch to.
Of note:
If anyone is wondering, Quickbooks Online will allow one Tax ID Number per account. That means if you want to maintain separate books and have 2 LLC's, you need 2 accounts. Yes, that's a ripoff. That's why I'm sticking with the Desktop, which is 1 user license, but with it, I can create as many accounts/files as I want. But again, wouldn't be surprised if in 2-3 years, they are discontinuing desktop support.
You should check out Buildium -- I'm a big fan. They keep adding new features. Just this week they launched an e-signing service -- so for $5 per lease you can have all your tenants Electronically sign the docs.
Online payments, accounting etc - takes a while to set up and a bit of a learning curve for all of the features but I've been sold since 2010 for my small business and plan to have it grow with me.
Check out billandpay.com Yes there is a monthly fee, flexible and integrates with QuickBooks and more.
My company is in this field, and I'm not surprised that Intuit Payment Network - given what they charged ($0.50 per ACH) - is exiting. In fact, just over the past two years, a number of companies used by landlords have shutdown - WilliamPaid (which offered free ACH), SparkRent ($1 ACH transfer), effectively Rentmatic, etc...
The long-term track record to-date of free rent payment services is not great. I understand that landlords desire a "free" service, but running a business does involve real costs, and electronic rent collection does involve both fees and risks - and all of that has to be paid to have a long-term sustainable business.
I don't send invoices as the tenants know what their rent is and also when it is due.
Regarding payment, have you considered getting a dedicated bank account and giving them the account number? I have dedicated savings account that the tenants use to deposit their rent and the bank I chose also has branches in the local supermarket which helps with off hours and weekends. There are no fees for me or the tenants and I transfer the money out as soon as it goes in.
Apologies if somebody already suggested this. There were too many replies to read them all.
I don't send invoices as the tenants know what their rent is and also when it is due.
Regarding payment, have you considered getting a dedicated bank account and giving them the account number? I have dedicated savings account that the tenants use to deposit their rent and the bank I chose also has branches in the local supermarket which helps with off hours and weekends. There are no fees for me or the tenants and I transfer the money out as soon as it goes in.
Apologies if somebody already suggested this. There were too many replies to read them all.
they can also go to their account and set up a "bill pay" and you get a check in the mail each month. i believe they can also send that check to the bank and the bank processes it as well.
@Justin R.- thanks for the feedback about QB payments, I really appreciate it. I wish there was an automated payment feature, but I suppose if my tenants were really bothered by that they could set up an autopayment via their bank instead- that's how I pay all my mortgages. I also wish they had a "pay me" for my website, but I can work around that too.
I think most people aren't jumping on the bandwagon if they don't already use Quickbooks. I bought the desktop version, and that plus the $.50 per transaction fee is still cheaper than anything else out there I would consider using. I am guessing they will push us towards a monthly subscription and phase out the desktop version at some point, which I am not happy about but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. By then we'll probably have twice the units we do now (or more!) so there may be some other solution for that volume at that time.
@Kelly N. Agreed. I bill for utilities at most of our units, so the tenant's monthly bill varies. That's why the emailed invoice with a "Click to Pay" model works perfect for us. The fact that it's 100% automated is what seals the deal for me.
I was hesitant to jump to the online version of Quickbooks, but it was really probably the single best process improvement we've made. Being able to do everything on the mobile app - unit turnover, adding expenses, accepting payments with receipts, accepting credit cards (for app fees at open houses), billing for utility usage while at the property - all that cut down my tedious overhead so much I'd probably pay twice what I'm already paying for Quickbooks. If/when you do switch, I hope your experience is similar.
I do regularly wish I could run multiple companies with a single subscription. And, I wish my tenants had a way to login and see ALL their invoices and pending charges (and pay them). I can deal with it with our current door count, but (like you said) at some point a purpose-built system will make sense. It better have a mobile app, though. ;)
The main lesson for me has been that using software and tools the way they were designed to be used is almost always the best choice - why swim upstream when you can just float along and let everything work the way it's designed to?
@Kelly N. Agreed. I bill for utilities at most of our units, so the tenant's monthly bill varies. That's why the emailed invoice with a "Click to Pay" model works perfect for us. The fact that it's 100% automated is what seals the deal for me.
I was hesitant to jump to the online version of Quickbooks, but it was really probably the single best process improvement we've made. Being able to do everything on the mobile app - unit turnover, adding expenses, accepting payments with receipts, accepting credit cards (for app fees at open houses), billing for utility usage while at the property - all that cut down my tedious overhead so much I'd probably pay twice what I'm already paying for Quickbooks. If/when you do switch, I hope your experience is similar.
I do regularly wish I could run multiple companies with a single subscription. And, I wish my tenants had a way to login and see ALL their invoices and pending charges (and pay them). I can deal with it with our current door count, but (like you said) at some point a purpose-built system will make sense. It better have a mobile app, though. ;)
The main lesson for me has been that using software and tools the way they were designed to be used is almost always the best choice - why swim upstream when you can just float along and let everything work the way it's designed to?
I heard Buildium provides a tenant "profile" page where they can log in, see their latest charges, their balance, etc. I just don't like the fact that once you are with them, they can increase prices to whatever they want and you are not likely to move away from them since everything is with them.
You should check out Buildium -- I'm a big fan. They keep adding new features. Just this week they launched an e-signing service -- so for $5 per lease you can have all your tenants Electronically sign the docs.
Online payments, accounting etc - takes a while to set up and a bit of a learning curve for all of the features but I've been sold since 2010 for my small business and plan to have it grow with me.
$1.00 for e-signatures is all you should pay! https://www.cudasign.com/
I'll have to look into - however the $5 rate includes as many signers as you want. I'd be willing to pay extra to have everything integrated into one spot as well.