Our new online tenant payment system has been live for a couple months and during the set-up process I’ve heard many of our customers ask if they can add a convenience fee to online payments. We strongly discourage this as it has been shown that making a resident pay a convenience fee to submit their payment online lowers adoption. Our customers definitely get the maximum value from accepting online payments when more residents pay online. So it is important to provide incentives that will actually encourage renters to pay online.
Some of our customers are coming up with creative ways to get the majority of their residents paying rent online. A unique approach is to actually add a convenience fee for accepting paper checks – the opposite of the traditional convenience fee to process online payments.
If you think about it, it makes sense. The bulk of the time property management companies spend during rent week is on accepting, receipting, and depositing paper checks. A recent study found that it takes about 5 minutes to process each check – if you’re processing hundreds of checks each month that time really adds up.
By providing incentives for the residents to pay online, the residents save money each month and the property management company saves enormous amounts of time and energy. A win-win for everyone! Of course, you should check your laws in your area to make sure this is okay as it can vary from state to state.
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