There are many ways in which online rent collection benefit your landlord, but as a tenant, you might be wondering if the more contemporary method has your best interest in mind. Rent is most likely a big part of where your hard-earned money goes each month, so making sure that the process is easy and effective and prevents any kind of disputes is ideal.
With these considerations in mind, let’s look at some of the ways that your life becomes a little bit easier when you pay rent online.
More Flexibility
Let’s say that your rent is due on the first of every month and that your landlord enforces late fees after a short grace period. It’s the first of the month and you’re out of town, but you’ve just remembered that you need to pay rent. If your options don’t include online payment and only include traditional solutions like cash or a check, you’re out of luck.
In order to avoid late fees, you might have to travel back and deliver the payment yourself. If that isn’t a practical option, you may have to send it in the mail. Who knows if the payment will reach your landlord in time? You might have to accept dealing with late fees.
If you use property management software to pay rent, however, all you have to do is find a place with internet connection and pay online. When you submit a rent payment online, it eliminates the chance of your rent being late. Better yet, if the platform that you use has a mobile app version, you don’t even need a WiFi connection to pay. You can complete the transaction using cellular data from wherever you are.
Automatic Payments
But there’s another possibility with this scenario: what if—while you’re out of town—you forget to pay rent altogether? Property management software has you covered there, too. You have the ability to set up what are called ACH payments that automatically withdraw money directly from your bank account every month when rent is due.
Paying rent online is already pretty easy, but once you’ve set up automatic payments, there are practically no regular steps for you to take each month to make sure that you get rent in on time and avoid late fees or any other disputes.
Increased Security
When dealing with sensitive information related to your bank account, it’s important that there are measures in place to keep that information safe from any threats. Property management software employs encryption software that does just that at a professional level and ensures that the online transfer of money is incredibly secure.
Compare this to delivering cash directly to your landlord. That money, in the time it takes for your landlord to manually make records of it, may be vulnerable to theft or may even be misplaced. Any kind of mix-up with your money is best avoided. Both you and your landlord want the process to be as smooth and as safe as possible.
More Transparency
As previously mentioned, your landlord will make records of your rent payment, and with traditional methods this is a manual process. Property management software automatically produces these records as soon as payments go through, and as a tenant you will also receive a version of these records in the form of a rent payment receipt. This means that you are able to see that your money is going to the right place, which can be especially helpful if you are using automatic payments.
Also, property management software will also allow you to view your whole rent payment history by keeping these records in one place for you, meaning that you have the ability to easily reference past payments if necessary.
Conclusion
Considering how accessible property management software is, the benefits it offers make switching away from traditional methods an easy decision. These platforms are easy to learn and will help you out in several ways. You have the ability to make the entire process of paying rent automatic without having to sacrifice the safety and security of your information. Don’t allow paying rent to be complicated and challenging. If your landlord offers online rent payments, take advantage of it.
