Rentec Direct

We’ve expanded the EasyPay system to now accept credit card payments.  Any tenant wishing to pay with a Visa, MasterCard, or Discover can now use the tenant portal to make those payments.  Once logged into the tenant portal, a tenant will click the EasyPay tab, which now gives them the option to pay by check (ACH) or by credit card.

By default, accepting credit card payments is off.  You must enable it by going to Settings, Setup EasyPay.  Select the type of credit card payments you wish to accept, then save your settings.  Most landlords should select all three(VI/MC/DISC).  In order to pay for processing costs, Rentec Direct will add a 5% convenience fee to the charged amount.  Then the full charge amount, minus the convenience fee, will automatically deposit into your checking account.

If you already are setup with EasyPay all you have to do is enable credit cards, nothing more.  If you aren’t yet enrolled in EasyPay, there is no cost to get setup, just visit Settings, Setup EasyPay and return the application.  ACH transactions using Rentec EasyPay are a flat $2.00 and credit card payments are just $0.50.

More exciting news! We’re now accepting a limited number of applications into the merchant service program!  This program sets your property management operation up with a merchant account which allows all EasyPay transactions to go directly to your checking account without interacting with ours.  This shaves valuable days off the clearing process for ACH transactions and for larger volume accounts has a much more compelling fee structure to save you processing costs on both ACH and credit card transactions.   To inquire, please email easypay@rentecdirect.com and we will reply with the necessary information and documents to you.

We have updated the application system to allow for collection of application fees directly via the online form.  We take care of all the work with the bank and merchant processing so your setup is as simple as telling us how much to charge.  To use this feature, first you must be already setup with EasyPay (which allows us to process transactions on your behalf).  Our basic EasyPay account has a setup fee of $25 and no monthly fee.  If you aren’t setup, you can get setup quickly by downloading the single page setup form at Settings, Setup EasyPay.

Once you are setup with EasyPay (or if you are already), visit Settings, Rental Application Defaults.  Scroll to the bottom for the new options under the Applications Fees heading.  Specify your fee, and if you would like us to automatically post a income entry under the associated property for you when it is received.

Once a tenant completes their application, we credit 95% of the fee received to your account (the remaining 5% is used to pay for our transaction costs).  You can then either use those funds for tenant screening, or allow them to remain as a credit on your account which will pay future invoices.

Ready to easily create beautiful, attention grabbing craigslist ads?  We’ve just made it as super simple with our new craigslist listing generation tool.

To use:

1. Right click the vacant property, choose File Library, and upload photos.  Select the check-mark to make them available for external listings.
2. Right click the vacant property, choose Edit Property.
3. From the property menu (upper-right), choose Profile / Marketing.  Enter the information here that you would like to see in your listing.  When done editing, click Save Changes.
4. Click the link to Preview and setup your Craigslist listing on the right.  Choose your theme, then follow the simple instructions to post your craigslist listing on the right panel.

That’s all there is to it to have the best looking craigslist listings in town!  Listing your property on other sites that accept HTML?  Feel free to use the same process and paste the code into any other site that accepts HTML formatting.

Now accounting for management fees is easier!  We’ve updated the software to automatically post management and placement fee charges to properties.  This automation comes with the flexibility to specify a flat rate, or a percentage.  With a percentage charge for your management fee you can also specify a minimum or maximum amount to charge.

To use this new system, Edit a Property, then from the Property Menu, select Management Fees.

For full usage instructions and step-by-step directions on how to use this new feature, just login to Rentec Direct, and click ‘need help’ in the upper right corner.  Click the option labeled ‘How do I setup and automate management fees?’

This upgrade affects Rentec PM users only.  Rentec Pro users can obtain this feature by upgrading to Rentec PM by clicking on Settings, Your Account & Subscription, modify subscription.

One of our goals at Rentec Direct is to make your property management easier! A lot of property managers and CPAs are accustomed to using a chart of accounts to manage their categories and accounts. It’s an accounting standard. We’ve always had full support for this standard; however, we omitted the numeric values in the past. To better comply with accounting standards, and also provide a familiar look and feel to property managers familiar with other applications such as Quickbooks we’ve added support for an officially numbered chart of accounts.

One additional, and very compelling, benefit of this is you can now define your account reference numbers for both bank accounts and categories. Reports and pages within the site are sorted by these reference numbers, so along with properties, you now have full custom sorting capabilities for all accounts and categories now.

This is a free upgrade for all Rentec users.  The next time you login, numeric values will be assigned to all your categories and accounts automatically.  To edit them, visit Settings, Setup Categories (may be renamed to Chart of Accounts someday soon).  To edit account reference numbers, edit the account and the reference number option is in the upper right.

Back in April we announced an advanced new way we were accommodating new, flexible, sort methods for properties.  Even so, many managers have different needs and our predictive sorting doesn’t meet everybody’s needs out of the gate.  As such we’ve introduced a new feature to allow you to sort your properties how you want them sorted which is 100% customizable.  To use this new feature, simply visit the Properties tab, right click on the property you wish to modify the sort, and choose the 2nd option, ‘Edit Sort Order’.  You’ll be presented with the default sort value, and you can directly modify it.   If you wanted this property at the beginning of your list, enter 0 (zero), or perhaps even a negative value.  If you want it at the end of the list enter a larger number like 9999.

In the example above if I wanted a property to show up in between 123 Test St and 989 Duplex Street (assuming those two properties had their default sort values of 123 and 989), I would enter a value in-between such as 400.

Back in April we announced the ability for Rentec users to add additional user accounts. Since that time we’ve asked and received a wealth of requests for the upcoming user permission system. We’re pleased today to release the permission system with many of the features included from your feedback! This is a free upgrade for all Rentec PRO, PM, and Association users.

We’ve designed the system with the utmost flexibility to accommodate as many situations as possible, while still keeping the system simple to use.  With the system you can restrict access to properties (and associated tenants), bank accounts, and owners.  Want to allow your employee Joe only access to a single property, no problem, select ‘Access Selected Properties’, select the one property, and your done.   Perhaps instead you want Joe to access all properties, except one or two.  That’s just as easy, choose ‘Restrict Selected Properties’, and select the properties you wish the user to be restricted from.  Either way, it’s only a couple clicks.

The same powerful permissions work for bank accounts and owners.  Also, you can define if the user has permission to add new properties, accounts, or owners into the system.  To try out this new permissions system, visit Settings, Manage User Accounts.  Then click on the permission level (3rd column) to edit their permissions.  By default all new and existing users have full permissions.

We are releasing this feature in beta for the time being until we’ve had a good amount of feedback.  If you discover any issues, or would like to see additional functionality, please click ‘need help’, in the upper right and fill in the form letting us know what you would like to see.

We’ve added a new report to the system to display in both a numeric and graphical sense some important performance statistics about your properties.

Highlights of the new report:

• Occupancy Rate Graph
• Income / Expense Graph
• Tenant Statistics
• Workorder Statistics

This report is property and date bound.  To try it out, visit the Reports tab, select a property or all properties, then a date-range and choose ‘Property Performance’ report.  Note, due to the complexity of this report, it is in beta for the time being until we’re clear it is providing the most useful data for our property managers.

We’ve just made it simpler to change deposit requirements for your tenants.  If you’ve entered a deposit value on move-in but need to change it, the process is now cleaner.  Just follow these two steps:

1. Go to the tenant’s ledger and click the deposit balance in the upper right.
2. Click the edit icon next to the deposit you wish to modify, change the value and click the save icon.

You can now print checks right from the Rentec Direct software!  We’ve added new functionality free for all existing Pro, PM, and Rentec for Associations customers to now print checks.  To get started it’s really simple, follow these easy steps.

1. Go to Settings, Manage Bank Accounts, and be sure you have at least one bank account setup.
2. Go to Settings, Accounting Defaults and choose the type of blank check stock you are using.  Rentec Direct supports all popular check types.  While your there we recommend you select Yes to the first item ‘Show the Accounts tab‘ to make getting to your accounts easier.
3. (optional) Setup vendors if you wish to simplify your check writing experience at Settings, Manage Vendors.  PM version users can also setup owners under Settings, Manage Owners.  All existing vendors and owners will auto-populate name and address when typing in the Payee field of the property expense form.
4. Post a new expense to any property.  In the expense type dropdown select ‘Print Check‘ and if not already selected, choose the account to draw the check from.
5. After posting the expense, go to Settings, Manage Bank Accounts (or click the Accounts tab if you have that enabled via Settings, Accounting Defaults).  Next to the account it will display how many pending checks there are.  Click there to open up the check printing window.

We’ve also designed a help document available once logged in in the upper right ‘need help‘ link.  It includes more detailed instructions along with screen shots of the process.