Tenant pays too much in rent.
Hey BP,
What should I do if a tenant pays two months worth of rent by mistake. They haven't caught it but I've been finding out its better to be proactive than reactive in this business. How do I go about giving the money back? Or do I ask if they wanted to be applied to their next month rent? How should I handle this? I'm trying to be really careful about how I handle this being this is my first property and I'm house hacking.
Most Popular Reply
I don't have direct experience working with Cozy, but I think it would be best if you take the following actions:
1) Wait for all payments to clear. It's possible they retracted one and re-sent, but the retraction hasn't hit yet.
2) Give your tenants a call and explain you had 2 payments clear - ask them if this was a mistake - at this point you don't have that information yet.
3) If they confirm it's a mistake, ask them if they would prefer it to be applied as a credit on their ledger, and next month the balance will zero out without them making an additional payment, or if they would like the advance payment returned.
4) Record all those points of the conversation in writing, and email it to them or have them sign it in person. If via email, you can say something like, please respond if anything I've outlined is incorrect.
5) If they want the overpayment returned, you should contact Cozy regarding how to reverse a payment.
6) Once you return the payment, again, keep a clear paper trail. I would assume Cozy automatically reflects this in the ledger.