I'm a small landlord with 4 rental properties, several of them multi family units. I want to begin taking online payments BUT don't want it to eat into profit too much. But want to eliminate the snail mail and waiting for checks to trickle in every month, etc. Thanks in advance!

Click on the "Easy Rent Collection" box up at the top. I don't use that service myself, but I've heard decent things about it here. (I do use the "Credit Checks" box above though and recommend that too!)

If you just had a single unit or something, you could have them pay using Amazon Payments (for free) each month. But, for over $1000 total, you're better off going with something like the one above to do automated deposits and such.

- John...

They get their cancelled checks back upon request and in an eviction situation, they would have your account details anyhow and could make small deposits to derail the foreclosure.

I'm relying on electronic payments and online bill pay. I rent some places overseas and make electronic payments.

I have about 50-55 deposits each months.

I opened (free accounts) with Wells Fargo, Chase, Bank America and asked my tenants to deposit their rent directly to my account each month.

Chase has FREE electronic QuickPay service (best deal) only 1 customer needs to have a chase account.

BankAmerica has free immediate electronic transfers between their customers. Wells Fargo used to have same free service, now they try to confuse us.

I'm with zb, all my tenants make deposits directly to my checking account. I state in the lease it's required.

They have various options:

electronic transfer

auto draft

deposit a check (until the first one bounces)

deposit cash or MO

I don't care which they use. I never touch a tenant payment. They are all time stamped. No "lost in the mail".

gevans/zb - how do you know which payment came from which tenant? Does the bank note the tenant name somehow?

RR:

My bank (credit union) sometimes, but not always, notes the name. I have only 7 rentals. All the rents are different, if only by one dollar.

Once or twice I've had someone deposit partial payment without letting me know. That could have caused a problem. Other than that, it's worked fine for years.

After so many years you kinda know your tenants' pattern. Electronic transfers are notified by the banks (id name & amount).

Check depositors are identified the following day when I download their deposited check images.

The cash crowd is most tricky since most are of same amount so they are instructed to call me after making their deposits (tellers' receipts are their proof of payment). Only a few insist (5%) on sending me their snail mail checks but the rest all do the steps above.

My 12 accounts are free after 3 bankers list their outrageous charges ($10-30 per month per account) then their reversal since I play by their rules.

Must have accounts at different banks to allow instant electrnoic transfers and to make sure funds are withdrawn instantly even when tenants pay by their personal checks. Must have more than 1 account per bank to work around the banks' daily funds limit of transfers.

The following is just food for thought. Some will "see" what I'm saying, some will not...

Often I hear landlords talk of using "free" accounts for residents to deposit into. However, seems to me, often landlords give absolutely no value to "their" time. If you have to transfer from one account to another every month. That still requires minimum time.

Even if your time is worth a minimum of $50 an hour, when you take just 5 minutes to do a task, you have used over $4.00 of your time. Folks, you can get that same task all done for you for less than half that. Much more importantly, the time you are taking time to do it, pulls you away mentally, from other things you could have been doing to reach your goals and dreams.

As a full time professional I did make way more than $50 per hour. Now that I want to make sure I get to collect my SSA before Uncle Bama wipes it all out to feed his "undocumented guests", my time is free. Happiness is when my $40K monthly rental income flows in and out those 12+ accounts without any errors of my part. My being a control freak (all deposits monitored at real time thanks to Uncle Al Gore's invention of the Internet) helps me keep my brain popping.

One point has not surfaced:

We TAKE their money on the first, not sit and HOPE they pay.

It's a totally different mindset that traditional LLs have trouble grasping. No waiting, wishing, hoping, calling, stopping by...because WE TOOK IT!

My residents LOVE IT!!! It saves THEM time and they are already paying their other bills online.

I like deposit only etc, but it's still WAITING.

Think about it - WHO is in charge of the rent? WAITING makes the resident in charge. THEY are in control.

Autodraft puts ME in control.

Cheap help AND pays for itself by bringing in more money than the old fashioned way.

We have more confusion and waste more time/energy on our few money order/check folks. Lost, torn, "I mailed it", "it's in my wife's purse and she went to a funeral"...

I love it when they call and say "YOU TOOK MY INSURANCE MONEY! I was going to pay it today and pay rent NEXT week."

Sorry. :)