As a way of giving back to the forum, and helping other people save time, i feel compelled to share my experience with Rent Manager. I see many questions about Rent Manager and feel sharing my experience may help others. I’ve owned parks for 15 years. A little over a year ago, I began using Rent Manager.
The learning curve was large. I paid for the extra training and am glad i did. My trainer was kind and knowledgeable. She even gave me a little more time then I paid for. All in all, It took me about 6 months to train my tenants to pay using the new methods, and for me to feel really comfortable using the software. Rent manager does have pretty good service, but with software this powerful there is a learning curve, no way around that.
Before rent manager I did all my receivables by hand. I had my tenants mail checks to a po box and I drove to my po box and bank often. I figured late fees with pen and paper. I spent about 5 hours a week doing all this. Now with rent manager, most everything is automatic. I was processing about 150 checks a month. I should have gotten the software several years ago.
Paylease offers 3 options to my tenants.
- Pay online via my website, either with a checking, savings, or credit card. $1 fee for checking and savings, and like 3~% for credit card. I pay the $1 fee, but I don’t pay for credit cards fees.
- Pay via automatic withdraw ach that I activate once per month on the 5th. $1 fee I pay.
- Pay at Walmart with cash. $4 fee, tenants pay
All of these options are integrated with rent manager and all I have to do is run a report on the 11th of each month to see which tenants are delinquent.
When I rent to a new tenant, I have to take about 15 minutes seeing them up in the software. Things like inputting their rental rate, adding their name and whatnot.
I also am able to run my water meter readings through the software. Once I put the readings in, the program automatically charges the tenants account according.
One negative thing I have to say about the software is the “vpo” option. Which is an option that allows you to mail letters to selected tenants right through the software. The option sounds nice and easy, but I have run into some bugs a few times, that almost make me want to give up on this option. Sometimes it feels like it would be easier to just print off letters and mail them myself. I would like to see Rent Manager spend some time making this feature easier and smoother in function.
I am about to purchase my 5th park, and will require all the new tenants to pay via paylease. I expect it to take several days worth of work training them, and inputting the tenants into rent manager, but I now know it is worth it.
All in all I would give Rent Manager a B+ or A- . I am very glad I made the transition. Honestly, it has given me the time to find and hopefully close on my 5th park. Between Rent Manager and paylease fees, it cost me about $300/mo and saves me about 20 hours of work each month. Well worth it to me. In addition, the software will make growing the business easier. I really do wish they would revamp the vpo.