Rental payment from tenant

[Gage Coffman]

Hello Everyone,

I’m new to the rental game and bought my first one within the past month. I’ve been following BiggerPockets for about 2 years before buying so I’m a huge fan of this service. I have a tenant who was there when I moved in (it’s a duplex). He is a huge partier and might be a little crazy. I asked him last month to sign up for apartments.com as that is where cozy has transferred to. Last month he never set up the payment system and paid me through the cash app. This month is almost halfway through and he has yet to set up an email that would work for the website as the one he had mysteriously didn’t work. I’m all about streamlining so I made him an email and told him to go ahead and change the password. I sent him over a text today stating that I would not accept rent through cash app again and that he would need to use the email and password given to set up his payments or I would not accept them otherwise moving forward as we’ve spoken about this already and late payments would accrue. He never sent me a text back. Is it within my rights to request payment a certain way or can he be defiant? I’m in Lorain Ohio if anyone needs clarification. Please and thank you for the advice! Here’s the text I sent…

Hey Matt, I set up an email for you so you can get registered to pay rent through apartments.com since your email was having issues. Going forward this is how the rent will be paid. Your email is... xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Password: Xxxxxxx  

You can go ahead and change the password if you would like. Make sure to get this set up before the 3rd of the month so late charges do not accrue. If you have any questions feel free to ask. Thank you. 

[Jill F.]

In Ohio you can specify how payments are to be made in  your lease. If you are stuck with the former owners lease, I would tell him that I'd permit payment by the terms of his old lease until it expires but then I will non-renew him for being uncooperative or he can get with my program. 

If he is m2m send him a new lease which if you did it today 8/12 would go into effect on Oct. 1. If he doesn't sign it before the last day in August, then on the last day of August send him a non-renewal which would take effect at the end of September.

I require payments through my property management software, Buildium but I do have a form for some of my old people that allows me to ACH debit their bank accounts automatically. Basically I set up the buildium payment for them.

Buildium also partners with paynearme so that I can accept cash at CVS, 7-ll, and Ace cash express stores (it costs the tenant 3.99)

I require this because when done this way all the bookkeeping is done automatically for each rent payment. and when I'm out of town I don't have to worry about getting checks to the bank.