Helpful Information & Definitions
Accept Rent Online with TurboTenant!
Forget about coordinating rent check pick up, waiting on the mail, or having the bank reject your deposit because they can’t tell if it is a ‘4’ or a ‘9’.
Instead, make rent payments convenient for both you and your tenants.
With TurboTenant you get more than just a way to transfer money:
Payment Tracking: See the status of all the charges you sent out in one place. It makes bookkeeping and tax season that much easier.
Payment Notifications: You’ll be notified immediately as soon as your tenant pays or if their payment is past due.
Autopay: With only a few clicks, your tenants can put rent and utility payments on autopilot.
Automatic Reminders: We’ll let your tenants know that they have an unpaid charge. And we’ll stay on them until they pay so you don’t have to.
Automatic Deposits: Once they have paid, forget about making a trip to the bank. Your money will be deposited directly into your bank account.
Automatic Late Fees: Designate a monthly past-due date and a late fee amount in your account. We'll handle the rest if your tenant pays late.
Rent Reporting: We automatically offer this exclusive service to all tenants who use TurboTenant to pay their rent.
Everything in One Place: Keep track of rent payments in the same place you keep a tenant’s contact info, important documents, and messages.
Collecting rent online with TurboTenant does not have any additional fees for landlords!
How to Get Started Collecting Rent
To set up online rent payments through TurboTenant, you will first need to create an account and select Payments during onboarding or navigate to the Payments section within a lease or the Payments page itself.
Watch our video above for a step-by-step breakdown of how you can set up rent collection on TurboTenant.
Go to the "Payments" tab within one of your leases, the "Payments" tab from the toolbar, or select "Payments" during the account creation process. If you are creating a new account, you can click the "Get Started" button on our How It Works page.
You'll select or create a lease with an attached rental property and tenants. If you don't have one of these, you can add them during the onboarding process. FYI, your tenants will not get an invite to their tenant portal until you've completed this process.
After your lease creation or selection is complete, you'll set up charges (recurring or one-time) for your lease. Don't worry if you don't know all the charges you need to immediately send out — you only need one to get set up within TurboTenant. We recommend setting up rent and/or security deposit first.
Once you've created at least one charge, you can set up your business or individual account, which is handled via our integration with Stripe. Afterward, you'll connect your bank account so you can receive payments. *
Next, you’ll need to verify your information. Be sure to enter your legal name, real phone number, and other important details to set up payments successfully.
Also during this setup process, you'll be asked to enable partial payments, automatic payments and auto late fees.
Lastly, you'll reach a summary screen, on which you can view and edit most of the information you just entered. Once you're happy with the information presented, you can complete rent payment setup, which invites your tenant to their portal and places you on the Payments tab of the Leases page to view all of your created charges.
You’ll see an "awaiting approval" banner as your account gets checked by our team. Once you are approved, you'll receive an email from TurboTenant letting you know you're ready to start collecting payments!
* TurboTenant securely connects to your account via a service called Plaid. You’ll be asked to select your bank and go through the process of entering your login information for your bank. Your login info will be encrypted and cannot be viewed by TurboTenant or your tenants.
If you are unable to find your bank or you don’t use online banking, please contact us via the chat bubble on this page or by emailing us at support@turbotenant.com.
Helpful Information & Definitions
Creating Subsequent Charges
After initial setup, you can add monthly or one-time charges by clicking "Create Charge" and following the required steps.
What is a Charge?
Charges are payment requests sent to each tenant on your lease. It is important to ensure all tenants are added to your TurboTenant lease. Learn how to add tenants to your new leases.
A charge will be sent to your tenant 15 days before that charge is due; however, your tenant will only be notified that a charge is posted and can be paid 7 days before that charge is due.
Charge Types
One-Time Charges
Your tenant is only charged once. These one-time charges are great for fees, security deposits, or pro-rated rent.
Monthly Charges
These are for recurring monthly charges that occur on the same day each month and are for the same amount each time. They are perfect for monthly rent, fixed utilities, or parking fees.
Frequently Asked Questions: Rent Payments
How much does it cost?
It is completely free for landlords to collect rent on TurboTenant! There may be a cost to the renter based on how they decide to pay. TurboTenant allows landlords to receive payments from their tenants via:
ACH (Bank Transfer)
Credit or Debit Card
Note: Not all banks are currently accepted by our payment processor. If your tenant is unable to find their bank on our list of approved financial institutions, they can manually enter their checking account and routing numbers or pay via credit/debit card. Our system does not support payments from savings accounts at this time.
Can I enable automatic payments for my renters?
Yes! TurboTenant is happy to offer our landlords and their tenants our Autopay service. This article shows you, the landlord, how to enable this feature. If your tenants have any questions about the set-up process, you can send them the link to this article.
What info do I need to collect payments from my tenant?
If your tenant applied online through TurboTenant, you don’t need to collect any additional information from them. As long as tenants are included in a lease within TurboTenant, they will be notified about any outstanding charges.
How will my tenant know to pay rent through TurboTenant? What do they see on their side?
For the first charge you send them, your tenant receives an introduction email telling them about paying rent through TurboTenant and explaining how it works. Here's what that email looks like:
To pay the charge, your renter will need to connect their bank account or add a credit/debit card to their account. After they successfully pay for their first charge, they receive future email notifications whenever a charge is due.
Within their TurboTenant account, they can see all due charges as well as charges they’ve already paid. It looks similar to what you see within your Landlord Account dashboard.
Does TurboTenant offer rent reporting for tenants?
Yes! Rent reporting is how we report tenants' on-time rental payments to credit bureaus. It can benefit everyone but is especially helpful for renters who lack any credit history. Learn more about this subscription service here.
I have multiple tenants on my lease — who receives the charge?
They will both receive the charge and either one can make a payment. If you have enabled partial payments, each tenant can easily pay their individual share of the charge.
How long does it take for the payment to reach your bank account?
ACH Payments on average take 5-7 business days to be deposited into your bank. If you're interested in expediting ACH processing, we offer enhanced payments through our Premium plan, which decreases the time to approximately 3 business days. After accepting your first payment through TurboTenant, you can ask also your bank to remove any holds to speed up the process.
Card payments take 2-3 business days to be deposited into your bank on average. This processing time can also improve with a Premium subscription. Learn more here.
PAYOUT SPEED TIMELINES
| Expedited* | Standard |
Credit / Debit Card Payment | 2-3 business days | 2-3 business days |
ACH Payment | 2-4 business days | 5-7 business days |
*applicable only to Premium subscribers
Can you restrict partial payments so only the full charge amount is paid at one time?
Yes, when setting up a lease in your account, you can choose whether or not to allow your renters to submit partial payments. If this option is not enabled, renters will be restricted to only paying the full charge amount.
This option can be changed at any time by going to your Lease Settings.
Can I charge late fees? What about security or pet deposits?
You can charge your tenants for any one-time fee or deposit. You can also set up automatic late fees within your account! Learn more about that process in this article.
How secure are rent payments through TurboTenant? Will my tenant see any of my bank account information or vice versa?
TurboTenant uses the best-in-class payment processor Stripe to securely transfer money from your tenants to you. You and your tenants' payment information is encrypted within Stripe and is not available or disclosed to anyone else.
Accounting is such a headache — is there a way I can easily track expenses and rent payments in your software?
We're glad you asked! TurboTenant partners with REI Hub to bring you intuitive accounting software built for landlords, which includes automated expense tracking. This integration also automatically pulls any rent payments tracked in TurboTenant into REI Hub's accounting tool. Learn more.
New offer: TurboTenant users get 50% off your first two months of REI Hub.
Do you have additional questions? Our Colorado-based support team would be happy to assist you — 7 days a week. Use the chat bubble in the bottom right corner of this screen or email us at support@turbotenant.com.