When you collect rent with TurboTenant, you can control whether your renters are required to settle past-due charges before paying new charges from their lease settings.
This setting is part of TurboTenant's broader payment prioritization system, which ensures that past-due charges are addressed before new payments are processed. This helps landlords maintain consistent payment records and encourages timely payments from tenants.
This setting is similar to controlling whether renters can make partial payments.
Adjusting this Setting:
Step 1 - Log in to your account and click on the 'Leases' tab.
Step 2 - Click on the lease that you want to update. Then click 'Edit' at the top right-hand corner of the page.
Step 3 - Scroll to the "Payments" section of the Lease Settings and select "Yes" or "No" on the question asking whether you will require renters to pay past-due charges first. Then click save.
What your tenants will see:
If this setting is enabled on a lease, renters on that lease will see past-due charges as payable, while other charges that are more recent or not past due will be greyed out until the past due payments are paid.
Payments are applied in order of due date, meaning older charges like late fees must be cleared before newer charges can be paid. This ensures a structured approach to handling tenant payments.
Renters can pay the past-due charges at the same time as the due charges.
If a tenant has a past due charge on an expired lease in TurboTenant (meaning the lease terms have ended in the system), they won’t be able to make a payment. To allow payment, you’ll need to reactivate the lease in TurboTenant - note, this refers to the lease terms in the software, not the lease agreement document.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: If a tenant paid toward the wrong charge, can the payment be reallocated?
A: Once an online payment has been applied to a charge, it cannot be reassigned through the platform. The "oldest charges first" setting only applies at the moment of payment — turning it off after the fact does not change how existing payments were applied, and only affects future payments going forward. To avoid this, ensure your payment prioritization setting is configured correctly before tenants make payments in the Lease Profile settings.