With the introduction of the new income verification report for tenant screening, you’ve provided us with some great feedback on how to further enhance the feature. We took your valuable feedback to our income verification partner, The Closing Docs, which they happily implemented to make the process better for you.
New! Resend Requests
Sometimes tenants don’t check their email very often and their income verification request might get lost in the mix of their dozens (hundreds?) of other emails.
If you want to pop the request right back to the top of their inbox you can now do that.
In order to resend an income verification, just go into the screening reports ordered on the tenant, and click “re-send request”. Within a moment or two that request will get delivered to your tenants’ mailbox or to their mobile phone if you choose to notify them via text message.
New! Send Requests by Text Message
While pretty much everybody has an email account, not everybody uses them. To most of us it’s no problem to open a mailbox, click a link, and complete the income verification report. But to those that don’t use email very often, a text message might just be more convenient, not to mention more quickly noticed.
Starting now, if you include the applicant’s mobile number in your income verification request, they will receive both an email and a text message notification.
Your rental applicant simply needs to click the link in the text message and complete the income verification right there on their phone. This is bound to get you more completed income verification reports.
Best Practices for Income Verification
Here are a few tips on how to get your income verification reports completed quickly, and how to get accurate reports.
- Let the applicant know that they are going to get an email (or text) shortly with a request to verify their income. If you have a packet you hand out to applicants, put it in there, and also tell them verbally. They are much more likely to look for the request if they know it’s coming.
- Give the applicant a deadline. If they know the income verification needs to be done in 24 hours, they are much more likely to do it right away. Note: Make sure whatever deadline you request of your rental applicants is in line with your state laws on applications.
- These reports are amazing at reporting the vast majority of renters’ regular work deposits, even if your applicant is self-employed, or only receives income via irregular deposits.
The income verification report can be one of the most useful tools for tips-based earners, 100% commission employees, and self-employed people to illustrate their capacity to pay rent. When reviewing a report, you will see these types of earners’ deposit history
in the Irregular Income section. This makes it easy for you to see the applicant’s income, which historically has been more difficult for this population to convey. - Make sure all adults get a full background check including credit, criminal, eviction, and income verification. When you are determining if the applicants can afford your rental you need to include the income from all adult applicants.
- New! Send them a reminder. If you need to make a decision on your applicant and they haven’t completed their income verification, resend the request. We let you do it up to once per day for seven days.
- Remember, income verification reports expire after two weeks. If you need to maintain that data for longer than that you will need to securely save or print the file for safekeeping.
