Real Estate Broker · Phoenix, AZ · Member since 2013 · 749 posts · 399 votes
Does anyone have a site they recommend for collecting rental monies from tenants/online direct payment?(paypal, freshbooks, quickbooks, etc...) With freshbooks you can send an invoice and they can pay online. However, many of the aforementioned websites charge high fees.
Investor · Hyattsville, MD · Member since 2012 · 822 posts · 441 votes
10y
Cozy.com is pretty good for landlords with a handful of rentals and is a free service that I now use on 2 of my units. If you are growing into more than a handful of units and want better accounting integration, consider checking out buildium and its features, which incorporates the accounting management and rent collection etc (this is often used by bigger landlord and property management companies, but their pricing lends itself to smaller landlords too) for $45/mo for up to 20 units and 50 cents a transaction, which is what quickbooks also charges (but quickbooks charges a separate annual subscription for their accounting software). It all depends on what your unit growth will look like and how organized you want your system to be. I use cozy for collection and download transactions into quicken property manager for accounting since I have less than 10 units.
I've used Rentec Direct for collecting payments via ACH and credit card for the past few years, it works perfectly well and the tenants love it and I love it because it's entirely hands off once it's setup. There's numerous services that handle this, just "tenant ach" on google to get a good list of options.
Investor · Milwaukee, WI · Member since 2012 · 109 posts · 42 votes
10y
I have used erentpayment.com and like it. They send reminders to tenants and me stating when rent will be deducted and then give us receipts after the transaction. You can also customize the way the money is collected, such as not accepting partial payments and collecting security deposits. I had a tenant that was routinely days late with the rent check. She finally signed up and now there are no problems.
Investor · Big Spring, TX · Member since 2016 · 140 posts · 59 votes
10y
Your bank may provide an auto draft payment to your account. Check with them. It would be a lot cheaper if you used your own bank. Or check with all of your local banks. I don't see the point of paying a website for something that your bank may be set up to do. If that doesn't work, then look into those websites.
Man, I still have a hard time reading the word "monies". When I went through school "money" was both singular and plural. Lol.
Investor/Property Manager · Suwanee, GA · Member since 2014 · 93 posts · 40 votes
10y
there is a company out there called Paylease, they are really good and reasonable. Cozy.co and several others are great for someone having a handful of properties. Builduim, Appfolio and Propertyware are great for people with 25+ properties. The latter are full property management systems incorpoting accounting, marketing, tenant portals, maintenance, online payment systems and websites.
Property Manager · Grants Pass, OR · Member since 2009 · 429 posts · 201 votes
10y
@Dan Krupa - There are a lot of really good ones out there, and some are built right into the property management platform too so your payments are recorded in your accounting software when it arrives and automatically backed out in the event it bounces (a couple were mentioned above). A google search for "tenant ach" will give you some of the top options in the industry.
Realtor · Houston, TX · Member since 2011 · 916 posts · 296 votes
10y
@Account Closed I don't like to accept payment especially money orders through the mail because things get lost. Most people can't afford to pay 2 rent payments in 1 month. I still require payment if it's lost in the mail. You can cancel a check, but with a money order you've already paid for it.
Real Estate Broker · Phoenix, AZ · Member since 2013 · 749 posts · 399 votes
10y
Really great advice everyone, thank you again. @Account Closed, I would never advise anyone to send a money order in the mail. Would you mail someone $1500 in cash? I didn't think so...
Investor · Rochester, NY · Member since 2016 · 477 posts · 426 votes
10y
Anyone else ever have trouble with the Cozy website using Chrome as a browser? I went to check them out and the website wasn't working at all on either of my computers running Chrome, but it seems to run fine in Internet Explorer (which I really don't like.)
Hey Jason! Katie from Cozy here. Would you mind shooting an email to our support team with some more details about your account so we can look into this? Most of us here use Chrome and we don't have any issues on our end, but would like to investigate!
Real Estate Agent · Chesterfield, MO · Member since 2014 · 101 posts · 28 votes
10y
We use buildium and they have rent collection capabilities, which works great as it automatically adjusts the rent ledger and works well with rent collection reports.
Investor · Rochester, NY · Member since 2016 · 477 posts · 426 votes
10y
@Katie Harlow When I saw your message, I decided to investigate the obvious: I uninstalled a Chrome add-in I had been using (It was one of the font packs that I installed back when FB wouldn't appear 'right' in Chrome) and everything started working fine. I sent an email to the Cozy support crew saying the same thing - thanks for being on top of it!
Real Estate Investor · Richmond, VA · Member since 2016 · 133 posts · 31 votes
10y
I've heard that some have success using PayNearMe for tenants who may not have internet access. It allows the tenant to pay their rent at select stores (i.e., 7 Eleven). The service is free for landlords, and funds are automatically deposited into the landlord's account. Here's a link with a little more info. @Brandon Turner also wrote an article on this service a few years ago.