Rentec Direct - Property Management Software

I know I'm not the only one out there that has a nagging feeling in their head when the beginning of the month rolls around.  I pro-rate my tenants so they are all due on the first, and typically give a 3 day grace.  There's the select few tenants that pay on the 1st.  That breed of tenants has mostly vanished.  The remainder tend to push that grace limit to it's maximum and come in on the 3rd or 4th of the month.  The whole time I'm worried if they will be in at all.  If the 5th rolls around and nobody is around, just the thought of notices and eviction sets me on fire because I know it's going to be a painful process no matter what and at the very least will strain the landlord-tenant relationship.

The scenarios may be:

1. The tenant just forgot to bring it by, or was out of town.
2. The check got lost in the mail (I've heard this more times than I think is really possible).
   
3. This just happened to me this month, once the mail reached my office it ended up in a different co-workers box, so while the rent arrived on the 4th, I didn't get it until the 7th.
4. Maybe the tenant really is looking to move.

In most cases it's just an accident that the rent didn't make it on time.  Most tenants want to stay and they just aren't prioritizing their bills well.  Even so if you've begun the eviction or notification process for non-payment it's creating a strain on your landlord/tenant relationship and it's costing you time and money.

There's a lot of companies out there that have similar practices to landlords in collecting a recurring fee for services.  The power company, the gas company, cable and satellite companies, and most municipal utilities such as garbage, water, and sewer.  What have all these companies discovered?  Yes, automated bank drafts (ACH) save them money, collection efforts, and often get them their funds faster!  Why haven't landlords jumped on this ship yet?  The answer:  some landlords have, most haven't however, but why is that?  My research tells me that the municipalities and big utility companies all have the means to go through the extensive process of getting it setup and automated with their banks whereas landlords do not.

I'm here to tell you that Landlords now do now have the means!  It's MUCH EASIER than setting up a bank account or merchant account, and the only prerequisites are a) You must own or manage property for rental purposes, and b) You must have a bank account.  If your a landlord reading this I'm absolutely certain you qualify.  The setup process is so simple now that any landlord could be accepting ACH tomorrow.

What does it cost?  I've seen processors charge from $0.50 (plus add'l monthly fee's and percents) up to $5.00 per transaction.  Rentec Direct charges a flat $2.00, and no percentage or monthly charges.

HUGE BENEFITS!  Aside from being able to sleep better knowing that the rent payments are going to happen automatically, one enormous benefit of doing automated ACH is longer term tenants.  Studies have shown that services that are paid automatically are less likely to be cancelled.  This is one of the very reasons the utility companies push ACH.  For a landlord this means less turnover.  How would you feel if your vacancy rate went from 30 days/year down to 10 days/year?  It's possible.  Another big benefit is your payment always gets priority.  Set the deduction day the day following the tenant's paycheck and generally banks process electronic payments (ACH) before paper checks.  You get your money before anyone else.

Sounds great, where do I signup?  I would suggest you do your research and pick a reputable company you can feel comfortable with handling your funds.  Go to Google and just type in tenant ach and see what you get.  There's a number of companies, including ours, that provide tenant ach services.

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The author is a founding member of Rentec Direct.  Rentec Direct provides property management software which includes ach for landlords and tenant screening.  While the above article may speak of products we offer or use screenshots from a product we offer, we encourage landlords to do their research and make up their own minds when selecting a new product.  That said, we of course welcome ActiveRain members with open arms.   

Many of us have been eagerly anticipating Google Voice to open their doors for months. According to the Official Google Blog, invites are on their way this morning. Invitations are being sent out on a first come first serve platter similar to how gmail was handled years back.  Get in line here.

How is Google going to help us manage our phone contacts, and should we use it?

Voicemail Transcription - I'll start with my favorite anticipated feature.  Google's answer to Apple's visual voicemail.  They up the ante and transcribe your voicemails into text for you and provide them online, and forward them via email or SMS.  No longer is it required we login to our phones and punch in our secret code to listen to the voicemail only to jot the notes down on a notepad.  Google eliminates this step and I am really excited about this.  How well will it work?

Integration with existing phones - It will work with all of your existing phones.  Tell Google Voice about your office number, cell number, and home number.  It can then intelligently route calls or text messages based on your rules any contact to any or all of those numbers, read on..

Call Routing - We all have that client that calls us three times a day with pretty silly requests right?  We sometimes feel a bit guilty letting it ring until it hits voicemail?  No more!  Google voice can be programmed to forward any contact wherever you want.  Automatically route a specific contact to your assistant, direct to voicemail, or to a different phone.  When the kids call it can ring all phones at once, or cycle through all phones, or push them directly to voicemail.  New caller not in your address book, Google says they will take the callers name and announce them to you prior to you picking up the call (it's still ringing on their end), and give you the choice of what to do with them prior to picking up the call.

Record Calls - With a touch of a button you can start recording a call for playback later.  Highly useful when driving (wait, we don't talk on the phone when we're driving do we?) and don't want to also be taking notes.  Click the record button and access the call any time.

Google has short videos and demonstrations of all these features (and oogles more) at the Google Voice website.

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Second thoughts - Is it worth it?

Ads - Google provides so much for "free" including search, email, etc.  Phone service is just another one of their free items.  That's great, but they have to make their billions somehow.  There will be ads!  In typical google tradition, probably few at first, but count on lots of ads in the future.  I'll admit though, google has been pretty good at being fairly unobtrusive with ads, so this may not be a huge issue.

New Phone Number - Google Voice claims they will support LNP (porting your existing numbers) in the future; however, right now they don't.  This means a new phone number is in your future if you want to use Google Voice features.  It doesn't cost anything from Google; however, it means getting your new number to all your clients.

Lock In / Lock Out - Once Google has you, they have you.  Especially if you use one of their numbers.  Nobody has experienced this yet, but often moving away from a phone provider is far more difficult than moving to them.  There are laws which protect phone numbers you LNP into Google when they support that and that should allow you to move them off Google if you choose; however, there's no such stated requirement for numbers Google provides that I am aware of.  Additionally, if you do something that Google doesn't like they can, if they wish, immediately terminate the service causing an instant loss of the phone number.

Trust in Google - With Google now transcribing voicemails into text, and recording calls in their worldly connected data centers it opens up the possibility of that data being hacked or obtained by other sources.  What would happen if your entire contact list, your last years worth of voicemails and SMSs all became public?  While this is unlikely, as Google runs a pretty tight ship; it is a possibility, and you can be certain there are thousands of hackers attempting to gain access daily.  Will they ever succeed?

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What's the harm?

All said, I'm going to try it out as soon as I get my invite.  I'll take their freebie number and try it out with a few friends or family and see how it goes before passing final judgement.  All in all, I'm pretty excited.  Mostly about the transcribed voicemail.  If that works, it will save me and our office a lot of time.

p.s.  If anybody has received their invite yet, I want to hear about it.  Please comment.

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Rentec Direct provides property management software free to landlords and property managers. Because of the importance of thorough screening for prospective tenants, we have integrated tenant screening directly into the software so in just a few clicks a complete and comprehensive background check including previous evictions can be done on any new tenants.