Our clients love their tenants and want them to have the best experience when scheduling their rent payments online, and we do too! The best property management software should provide those refined touches, designs, and updates that make both tenants and landlords lives easier. And, the Rentec Direct development team has been hard at work streamlining the tenant portal online payment processing by making scheduled payments easier while adding an instant payment option to the mix of choices.
What can you and your tenants expect with these changes?
In short, you and your tenants will notice the following changes:
- Terminology Updates: Changes for understanding and to accommodate the added payment option.
- Instant Payments Update: A new option to make instant payments easier, removing the need to manually enter credit card information but instead be able to choose stored payment information (credit card, debit card, or bank account information) to process an instant payment.
- Per-Tenant Payment Options: The option for landlords to enable and disable credit card payment processing on a per-tenant basis has been added.
Below are the details, including before and after graphics explaining the improvements.
Terminology Updates
The update to the payment pages within the Tenant Portal can be broken into two segments: terminology updates and instant payment remodel.
We’re adopting the term schedule for the two options pertaining to future payments. The two options for future payments are singular and recurring. A singular future payment has been renamed from One-Time Payments to Schedule One-Time Payment.
While our recurring future payment option has gone from Automatic Recurring Payments to Schedule Recurring Payments.
The instant payment option has changed from Pay Instantly by Card to Make Instant Payment. It now more accurately reflects the updates surrounding instant payments.
Previous Tenant Portal Payment Options
New Tenant Portal Payment Options
Instant Payments Updated
The tenant’s instant payment option previously required them to use a credit card. It also required them to manually enter the credit card information every time they made an instant payment.
Previous Instant Payment Option
The Tenant Portal now allows the tenant to instantly process a payment using a credit card or bank account.
The flow has changed a bit. Instead of manually entering credit card details, tenants can simply select a saved credit card or bank account. To avoid any confusion, the system will automatically prompt the tenant to enter their payment information if they have not already. Managing their payment accounts before making an instant payment eliminates the need to enter information into the form for every payment.
Note: For both tenants and software users, if payment information is entered but not saved, the system will offer a handy reminder to save the information before leaving the page.
New Instant Payment Option
Tenant Payment Fees
The fee for processing an instant payment now works similar to the scheduled payments. The tenant is informed about the processing fee as soon as the system has the required information to accurately calculate the fee amount. If a bank account is selected, the fee will display. If a credit card is selected, a payment amount is also required before displaying the fee.
Note: The fees are determined by the online payment settings the landlord has enabled either for all tenants or on a per-tenant basis.
The Rentec Direct knowledge base article with corresponding video and webinar information can be found here: Payment Processing Settings | Preferences
Per-Tenant Payment Options
Users can now disable credit card payments per tenant by using the CC Payments Enabled toggle. You can find that option using the following instructions.
In your Rentec Direct account:
- Click Tenants
- Right-click and choose Online Payments
- Under CC Payments Enabled, choose YES or NO (see graphic below)
- Press the Save Changes button when finished.
We value our clients time and look to make processes streamlined and easy for you and your tenants. These newest Tenant Portal and payment updates should help tenants save time by allowing them to store all payment information options and schedule recurring, one-time, and instant payments quickly and easily while allowing landlords more control over types of payments received on a per-tenant basis.
Rentec Direct is the most customer-friendly property management software. Features include online rent payments, tenant and owner portals, one of the industry’s largest vacancy listing syndication networks, full property, tenant, and owner accounting, 1099-MISC reporting and more. Rentec Direct was recognized as Real Estate Company of the Year in the 2022 American Business Awards®, named a SaaS Company of the Year in the 2022 American Best in Business Awards, was named one of the Most Customer Friendly Companies of the Year in the 2021 Best in Biz Awards, has been named to the Inc. 5000 List of Fastest-Growing Private Companies for six years in a row.
