6 Security Tips for Property Managers During Rent Collection

Rent collection is every landlord’s opportunity to get a return on their property investment. However, survey data shows that payment problems are the top concerns that landlords have about tenants. In particular, trouble with collecting rent on time is a common problem. Late payments can delay your income and plans.

Securing payments during rent collection must be one of your top priorities as a property manager. Maintaining security is as important for you as it is for tenants. As such, everyone needs assurance and peace of mind that the process is safe and secure.

In this post, we discuss six different security tips for property managers. We are confident that implementing these strategies in your rent collection efforts will simplify, secure, and improve your operations. At the same time, tenants can rest assured that you have a smooth system that also works in their favor.

1. Establish Late Rent Fees

Establishing late rent fees is one strategy to minimize and prevent late rent payments. These fees can help compensate for any tenant’s late rent inconveniences. For example, you could be relying on a tenant’s payment for another bill, but they failed to give notice that they could not pay on time. Accordingly, you paid your bill late, resulting in extra fees. However, charging tenants a late fee can cover the fees you had to pay on your bill.

The same idea applies to late rent fees for tenants. Essentially, late fees discourage late payments by letting tenants know the consequences of paying rent late without prior notice. As such, it is important to detail these fees in writing.

With this type of policy in place, tenants are more likely to pay their rent on time to avoid any extra charges. While this policy can be a good way to secure on-time payments, it’s also important to consider that some tenants may be facing financial difficulties, so provide leniency when appropriate to maintain a good relationship with them.

2. Collect Rent Online

Another problem landlords and tenants face is an inconvenient payment channel. As a property manager, you could utilize an online service for its multiple benefits, including faster deposits and automatic payment record tracking. These benefits also benefit tenants because they can easily track their rent payments.

Collecting rent online is perhaps the most secure solution that property managers can implement in their operations. It requires card details and involves highly secure transactions to ensure data protection. Any company that accepts, processes, and stores credit card information follows the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).

This set of security details requires companies to maintain a secure user environment. Any third-party payment service provider you use for your rent collection efforts will follow standard security practices. Thus, you can save time and effort by learning how to incorporate them into your practice.

3. Assign a Property Manager To Collect the Rent

You might wonder why you should hire a property manager for your rental property when you could handle it alone. However, property management requires demands and sacrifices on your end. You may discover that getting a dedicated professional to manage your property (or properties) helps maximize your investment.

When you have a professional property manager handling your rental, they will oversee all the rent collection duties. If you have more than one property, each with multiple tenants, you can already imagine that you have quite the task of keeping up with all these responsibilities. Your property manager will cover you while you focus on your other businesses.

Relatedly, suppose you own a rental in another county or state. Running a rental property requires compliance with laws, which can vary per area. Keeping up with all the local laws can be overwhelming for one person. However, professional property managers can meet these demands while securing rental operations.

4. Grant Access Controls to Relevant People

If you do hire a property manager to manage your rental and invest in property management software, you will need to establish robust authentication. Password protection is a standard method of protecting sensitive data. However, granting access controls to relevant team members furthers your security by preventing unauthorized users from seeing your data.

Having role-based permissions in your operations also helps you track who is in charge of what task. Only when specific people can enter certain areas in your property management software can you easily see who might have accessed sensitive information without your permission.

When implementing these security measures, make sure that you assign trustworthy members to your team. If you prefer to get a third-party property manager, confirm their good reputation before hiring them to oversee your rent collection responsibilities.

5. Monitor Transaction Activity

You can create notifications for rent notices and transactions to help you secure your collections. When you monitor your transactions, you can look for suspicious behavior concerning your tenants' payments and follow up on them immediately when they pay rent.

Your confirmation can help both parties feel secure that they are taking the necessary steps to ensure a safe transaction. Landlords and tenants can also keep an account of the transaction for their records. Having these receipts can help you avoid nonpayment landlord/tenant disputes should you ever encounter them.

6. Deposit Rent Into the Appropriate Bank Account

Having different bank accounts for your rental properties is a great strategy for securing your income while separating it from your assets. Make sure to deposit the rent directly into your rental property’s bank account and not your account. If anything goes wrong with the tenant’s payment, you can easily trace it back to your rental property bank account.

This security measure can also help you avoid any potential accounting issues. With a dedicated account for your rental property, you can immediately separate income from expenses, which makes filing taxes much easier when the season comes around.

It may seem overwhelming to track multiple rental payments when you have multiple bank accounts. However, property management software can help streamline your operations.

Track Online Payments and Rent Collection With ExactEstate

Security is critical for landlords and tenants during rent collection. You protect your tenants' payment data as a property owner or manager. Likewise, tenants will want assurance that they pay their dues on a secure platform. Consider investing in property management software to simplify your online rent collection.

Property management software is a method for managing updates concerning your rental properties. Regarding rent, property managers need to remind tenants about their payments, track income, and manage expenses. Property management software streamlines these processes for efficiency.

ExactEstate is a property management solution with a wide range of features. We designed our platform to be intuitive, ensuring that you can navigate the system even with a basic technological understanding. Like any software that handles payment information, we follow standard security protocols for your and your tenant’s peace of mind. Schedule a demo today.