Smart Rent Online Blog

Collect Rent Online – How to Apply Manual Credit or One-time Charges

2009-08-04T01:56:00.001-07:00

In this blog post, we will show you how you can apply manual credit or one-time charges. This can be a very useful feature when you received the payment by a physical check or you need to apply one-off charges for things like utility bill. Here’s how you can do it.

1. Log in to SmartRentOnline.com.
2. Click on the name of the property
3. Click on the name of the tenant

4. You will then find the ‘Settings’ page for that tenant. Please note that you can edit most of the settings (Tenant Info, Repeated Charges, and Other Settings) for your tenant here.

5. Near the top area of that page, you will find ‘Statements’ tab. Click on that tab.

6. On the ‘Statements’ page, when you scroll down to the bottom, you will find ‘Apply Manual Credit’ and ‘Apply One-time Charge’ buttons.

7. Use those buttons to apply manual credit or one-time charge. When you are done, make sure that you click on ‘Save Statement’.

You will now see that the balance has been adjusted accordingly.

Collect Rent Online – How to Approve Tenants

2009-08-04T01:14:00.000-07:00

In the previous post, we showed you how to add a tenant by creating or linking to the tenant’s account. (See this blog post.) That was a method you can use when you knew the tenant’s email address.

When you don’t know the tenant’s email address, you can ask your tenant to go to SmartRentOnline.com to sign up. When they successfully sign up, they will be asked to enter the property ID. (Click here to have a look at what your tenant will see.)

You (as a landlord or property manager) can find the Property ID by following these steps:

1. Log in to SmartRentOnline.com
2. Next to the name of the property, you will find a down-arrow icon. When you click on it, you will find ‘Edit’ option. (Please note that you want to send the Property ID of a House or Apartment Unit. Property Complex or Apartment Buildings cannot have a tenant. See this blog post for the description of different property types.)

3. When you select the ‘Edit’ option, you will find the Property ID next to the name of the property.

You can send this information to your tenant. Your tenant can enter the Property ID and make a request to link to the property that you have set up.

When tenants enter the Property IDs and sends requests to link up to the properties that you have set up, they are put under the ‘Pending’ status.

When you log in, you will find a message that says, ‘You have 1 tenant pending for verification – click here’.

Click on the link that says, ‘Click here’, and you will find ‘Tenants – Verification Pending’ report.

On that report, click on all the check boxes next to the names and then click ‘Approve’ button.

From there, you can follow the instructions shown on the screen to finish setting up your tenant.

When you are done, click on the ‘Properties & Tenants’ tab on the top. When you click on the name of the property, you will find the newly added tenant.

Smart Rent Online Webinar on July 22

2009-07-13T23:39:00.000-07:00

Join us for a Webinar on July 22

Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/380803235

Facilitator: Lloyd Lim, Founder, Smart Rent Online Inc.
Agenda:
15 min: How to Get Started on Collecting Rent Online with SmartRentOnline.com
15 min: Q&A Session

Title:		Smart Rent Online Webinar
Date:		Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Time:		8:00 AM - 8:30 AM PDT

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 2000, XP Home, XP Pro, 2003 Server, Vista

Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.4 (Tiger®) or newer

Collect Rent Online – How to Add Tenants

2009-03-16T02:39:00.000-07:00

After setting up your property (See this blog post), you can add your tenants.

First, you will need to click on the name of the property where you want to add a tenant to. Please keep in mind that you can add a tenant under a ‘House’ or an ‘Apartment Unit’.

Once you are under a House or an Apartment Unit, when you click on the dropdown shown on the right, you will be able to select ‘Add Tenant’ option.

On the next screen, you will be able to set up a login account for your tenant.

Here, you are required to enter the first and last name and email address of your tenant. You will also be setting a temporary password so that your tenant can log in to SmartRentOnline.com.

If your tenant has already created an account, when you enter the email address and then click on the next field (password field), it will run a real-time check and if the email address already exists in our system, it will allow you to add an existing tenant.

Let’s get back to the case where you are creating a login account for your tenant. After filling in the fields, you can click on ‘Save’ button shown on the bottom right corner of the screen.

On the next screen, you will be able to set up your repeated charges. Your repeated charges can be Rent, Parking Lot Fee, Garage Fee, or anything else you desire to add. When you are done setting up your repeated charges, go ahead and click on ‘Save’ button.

On the next screen, you will be able to set up the following things:

> Deposit
> Rent Start Date
> Days Until Late
> Late Fee
> Due Date
> Block on Late
> Allow Partial Payment

When you are done, click ‘Save’ button.

You will return to a property view and you will see that you have successfully created a tenant.

When you click on the name of the tenant, you will be able to see the current setting, payments, and statements for that tenant.

As you complete the tenant account creation, a welcome email will be sent to the tenant. We still recommend that you have a verbal communication with the tenant just in case the email was not successfully received. (It can be filtered into Junk mail folder – Please note: If you save SmartRentOnline.com’s email address as your contact, those emails will not be filtered as junk mails.)

It would be also beneficial for you to encourage your tenant to set up the bank account right away as the bank account verification process can take a few days.

There you go. You and your tenant are almost ready to collect and pay rent online. Once both you and your tenant verify bank accounts, you will be able to say good bye to manual process and start enjoying the benefits of automating the property management with SmartRentOnline.com!

Collect Rent Online – How to Add Properties

2009-01-11T04:45:00.001-08:00

In this blog post, we will cover how you can set up your properties in SmartRentOnline.

After signing up as a landlord, when you log in to SmartRentOnline.com, you will see the ‘Home’ as shown in the above. From here, you can click on the ‘Add Property’ dropdown menu.

When you click on this dropdown menu, you will notice that there are three types of properties that you can choose from.

House

House is a property type that can only have one tenant. So, if you have one property that is rented out to one tenant, you would choose House as your property type.

Apartment Building

Apartment Building is a property type that can contain Apartment Units. If you have a property that is rented out to multiple tenants, Apartment Building is a good choice as the property type.

Property Complex

Property Complex is a container that can contain any property types – it can contain Houses, Apartment Buildings, or even another Property Complex. Because of this flexibility, it is really easy to organize your properties the way you want. It is very much like folders in Windows where you can create many folders in different levels to organize your documents.

In this blog post, we will show you how you can set up an Apartment Building. When you select Apartment Building from the dropdown menu, you will see a screen like the one shown below.

After filling in the form, click ‘Add’.

Now, you have created an Apartment Building under Home. From there, you will click on the name of the Apartment Building that you have created.

Please note that it lets you know where you are by showing you the location. In the screen above, you are under ‘San Francisco Apartments’.

From there, you will again click on ‘Add Property’ dropdown menu and then select Apartment Unit.

As you can see, most of the entry fields are pre-filled based on the information captured on the Apartment Building. Here, we will enter ‘Unit 101’ as the Name and 101 as the Unit Number before we click on the ‘Add’ button.

Now you will see that you have successfully created an Apartment Unit under the Apartment Building that you have just created.

If you need to change any of the information you have previously entered, you can click on the down-arrow icon and then select ‘Edit’.

Hope you were able to follow this blog post and set up your own properties. In the next blog post, we will show you how you can set up your tenants.

Click here to see the next post.

Collecting Rent Online - How to Get Started

2009-01-05T06:00:00.000-08:00

In this blog post, we will cover how you can get started on collecting rent online. First, you need to sign up by clicking on 'Try It FREE' or 'Get Started Now' button. When you click on the button, you will see a signup form as shown below.

Please note that you will have to select an appropriate role. If you are planning on collecting rent, you need to sign up as landlord.

When you complete signing up, you will be logged in to SmartRentOnline.com. The first thing you want to do is to set up your bank account. You can do this by clicking on the ‘Bank Accounts’ tab.

From there, you can click on ‘Add Bank Account’ button and follow further instructions shown on that page to complete the process.

On the next post, we will cover how you can set up your properties and tenants.

Click here to see the next post.

Smart Rent Online Beta Launched!

2008-10-26T06:45:00.000-07:00

SmartRentOnline.com that allows you to pay or collect rent online has launched Beta Program! You can apply to become a beta user by signing up from the website.

We will also be posting blog articles that cover how you can get started on paying or collecting rent online. Please stay tuned!

SmartRentOnline Team

Beta launch is on its way!

2008-10-08T06:17:00.000-07:00

SmartRentOnline is getting closer to Beta launch. During this Beta period, we will send out invitations to selected number of people to try out our service. Beta users will be able to test all the functionalities that we plan to release in full launch. Please stay tuned for more updates.

Thanks!

SmartRentOnline Team