Online rent collection

General Landlording & Rental Properties
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Online rent collection

Kathleen Hendricks
Broker Associate/Investor · Carmel Valley, CA · Member since 2014 · 45 posts · 9 votes

I've been  using Cozy.com for rent collection (11 office/retail suites and 15 residential units) but it's a little clunky and some tenants are challenged using it.  Would love some recommendations for electronic rent collection systems that are easy on tenants and not too expensive.

Thanks  

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Darnell J.
Investor · Atlanta, GA · Member since 2016 · 31 posts · 28 votes
8y

@Jordan Moorhead So, with all the mentions of Cozy.co I signed up for an account and added a few of my properties for trail run. It is a great platform and is really easy to use. I do however have to rate TenantCloud as a better platform than Cozy.co. TenantCloud does practically everything Cozy.co does, plus more. The graphical user interface for both look very similar...its almost like TenantCloud copied Cozy.co platform and added some additional features to it.

Some highlighted features of TenantCloud are:

  • Ability to customize online rental applications
  • A File Manager for each property, it categorizes all uploaded receipts and documents for each property
  • A Document Template to upload custom lease agreements, house rules, pet rules, and other addendum to the lease. 
  • Allow tenants to sign lease agreements electronically.
  • Receive online ACH payments with TCPayments (Dwolla) - Tenants pay rent online
  • Allows you to list multiple owners for a property and enter all detail information about property, such as the purchase price, purchase date, insurance, taxes, down payment, annual interest rate, current loan balance, loan terms, mortgage loan company, amortization schedule, depreciation years/schedule, utility providers, and much more.
  • Online rental applications  & vendor to screen your applicants
  • Built-in renters insurance vendor for when your tenant signs lease
  • Auto invoicing and late fees
  • Free listing website
  • Tenants can submit maintenance request online using a very cool and easy to use interface, of which you can easily assign/forward the maintenance request to one of your service professionals.

The Financial Reports sections has a number of great reports that can be auto generated, such as:

  • Depreciation Tracker report that allows you to track annual depreciation for your residential and commercial rental property, which is also used in your tax preparation report.
  • Expense report that provides the expenses based on the property or a specific unit. It is available for accrual type accounting only. The report shows all paid expense invoices for all properties and units excluding liabilities (deposit, prepaid rent, pet deposit, etc.). This report can be searched based on owner.
  • Monthly Property report shows the property accounting based on each unit. The income and expenses including payment to owner and management fees. This report is designed to be for a property manager in order to deliver to an owner.
  • Operating Statement report that shows the invoices of which have been marked “paid” for both income and expenses. The report includes records for all properties and units excluding liabilities categories (deposit, prepaid rent, pet deposit, etc.). The purpose of this report is to monitor cash-flow coming in and out of the rental property.
  • Rent Roll report that shows all tenants that have an active lease in each property. The report includes the tenant's name, deposits held, market rent and the balance owed. This report can be searched by property owner or property.
  • Tax Preparation Report that shows all income and expenses for a specific period of time. This report is designed to help a landlord file their taxes. The report will include all income as well as expenses, management fees paid, depreciation and interest expense over the set time period. Deposits, Prepaid rent and other liabilities will not be included.
  • Tenant Statement report that shows a tenant's accounting based on when it was due. The report includes deposits, prepaid rent and other deposits. It will also include all invoices outstanding to date.
  • Provider Statement Report report that shows a vendor's and service professional's accounting based on when it was paid. Report includes all unpaid bills. Any blank or empty amounts in the Paid column are amounts that have not been entered as paid.

There are some other pretty nice features to it that I'm not listing. Its FREE, so it doesn't hurt to sign up for an account and compare it to others such as Cozy.co. Like I said the interfaces are very similar so you won't have much of a learning curve moving from Cozy.co to TenantCloud. I personally also like the Dashboard of TenantCloud better...again more features. I hope this helps. Enjoy.

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  • Ben Travis
    Investor · Eugene, OR · Member since 2016 · 34 posts · 40 votes
    8y

    I pay the $9/mnth for up to 150 units and includes full e-signature lease agreements and templates as well for that. I have 20 properties and with total gross rent of about $28k/mnth.  None of my tenants pay any transaction fees or anything and TenantCloud even coordinates the lease signing in their app.  I also pay all my contractors with TennatCloud as well, which is an average of about $9k/month and there are no transaction fees for me or them either, so for $9/mnth you can really do a lot.   

    I did use the free version and integrated PayPal and stripe, but each charge almost 3%, so I switched quickly. 

    1Reply
  • Kevin Gomez
    Member since 2018 · 2 posts · 0 votes
    8y

    @Kathleen Hendricks , seems like you are interested in something like what Hemlane can offer you. I found it very easy to use and your tenants will appreciate paying rent from their mobile device. You can also check out Yardi or Appfolio. 

    0Reply
  • Kathleen Hendricks
    OP
    Broker Associate/Investor · Carmel Valley, CA · Member since 2014 · 45 posts · 9 votes
    8y

    Thanks!

    0Reply
  • Brianna Huynh
    LOS ANGELES, CA · Member since 2018 · 2 posts · 1 vote
    8y

    Kathleen, seems like you are interested in something like what Hemlane can offer you. I found it very easy to use and your tenants will appreciate paying rent from their mobile device. You can also check out Yardi or Appfolio.

    1Reply
  • Kathleen Hendricks
    OP
    Broker Associate/Investor · Carmel Valley, CA · Member since 2014 · 45 posts · 9 votes
    8y

    Thanks Ben Travis I’ll check it out!  Brianna and Kevin you sent me the exact same message - suspicious to say the least. 

    0Reply
  • Brenton Fowler
    Rental Property Investor · Indianapolis, IN · Member since 2016 · 10 posts · 5 votes
    8y

    I'm surprised no one has mentioned Quickbooks Payments. If you use the online version for your accounting, you can automate the sending of rent invoices, tenants can pay right from the invoice, and automatically updates your records when they pay. They also just added an automated late fee feature as well. All free currently, but I think they may begin to charge once you hit a certain revenue threshold.

    Downsides are similar to other ones that have been stuck in this thread. Money is in limbo for up to 10 days. A couple of our professional tenants have figured workarounds including delaying payment by entering an invalid bank account number or paying while having NSF.  It can sometimes take up to a week for QBO to catch these.

    0Reply
  • Andreas W.
    Durham, NC · Member since 2013 · 502 posts · 215 votes
    8y

    Does anybody know of a reliable web based service that allows automatic re-occurring payments? I am interested in the payment part only.

    0Reply
  • Michael Pike
    Rental Property Investor · Dallas, TX · Member since 2018 · 12 posts · 6 votes
    7y
    Originally posted by @Kraig Kujawa:
    Originally posted by @Donna Sommers:
    Originally posted by @Jake DeBoer:
    Originally posted by @Donna Sommers:

    @Jake DeBoer, online payments are included in the free basic plan. You can set up PayPal and Stripe to accept credit card payments.

    TCPayments have no "transaction fees" but you need to pay $9/mo subscription. PayPal and Stripe have transaction fees:

    So again, how is this free?

    Jake, you can set up Stripe and pass the fee to tenants. That is how it's free.

    Whoa! That's a big difference. The first thing 90% of my tenants asked when they signed up for Cozy was if it's free.  I made sure i put that they had to use my portal as part of the lease, but i feel good about that since it's no extra charge for them if they link their bank account. Passing an extra $9/mo is a tough pill, IMO.

    I just saw this thread and think there is a bit of confusion about the tenant cloud payment. The $9 fee is a monthly charge for the plan and not a per unit charge. For instance, I have 5 units so the $9 plan would cost me roughly $1.80/unit. And the more units you have the less per unit the service would cost.

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