How to send a Payment Request or set up a Payment Plan

Designed for the digital landlord, our latest feature brings you total rental management: from bookings to beyond.

Bryony

3 minute read

·

Updated on 2 Sep 2024

Automating your payouts is easy with our centralized payment system. In this guide, you'll learn how to send payment requests, schedule payments for the whole rental period and track them directly from your account.

A HousingAnywhere payment request is a fast and simple way of asking your tenants for money. You can create multiple payment requests in one go with our payment plans.

Immediately after you and your new tenant have confirmed the booking on the platform, you can send them payment requests for any fees supplementary to the first month’s rent: deposits, furnishing costs, the second month’s rent, and more. You can create payment requests and schedule them for the future.

You can request these payments from the centralized comfort of the HousingAnywhere platform. Click Payment Request, and we’ll handle the collection.

Your tenant will pay a non-refundable service fee (2.5%) for each payment request. This service fee is currently charged for properties in all regions, excluding the U.S.A. and the U.K. The service fee helps us improve the usability, reliability, speed, and security of payment requests.

Based on the due date you have set for the request, we’ll automatically send reminders to your tenant before the due date. We’ll only be in touch to let you know when we've collected the money, paid it out, or when it's overdue. You’ll receive updates by email and see the payment updates on your Account (Payments > Payment requests).

You can create a payment plan and send multiple payment requests to your tenant in one go. After generating a bulk payment plan, you can still track and cancel individual requests. We’ll handle the reminders for your tenant and let you know when the requests are paid, just as we do with individual payment requests.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If your tenant has yet to move in but has paid a payment request, we will hold on to the money and only transfer the funds to you 48 hours after the tenant has moved in. We do that for security and anti-fraud measures, just as with the payout of the first month’s rent.

Remember that to send payment requests to a user, they must have first booked your property, i.e. they must officially be your tenant.

There are 2 ways you can send payment requests to your confirmed tenants:

Via the direct messaging system

1. After logging in, go to your Inbox and select the conversation with the tenant you want to request a payment from.
2. Select Send a payment request or Create a payment plan. The payment category, ‘Amount’ and ‘Title’ are required fields, meaning they must be filled to generate the request. If you're creating a recurring request (e.g. the monthly rent) via a payment plan, use the date picker to select the date the payment will be due for every month of the plan.
3. Once you’ve checked that all the information is correct, you can submit the payment request/payment plan to trigger a series of notifications and reminders for your tenant.
4. If you've sent a single payment request from the chat and want to send that tenant another request, select Send another payment request.

Via your payment overview

1. Verify your phone number and identity with HousingAnywhere, so that you can access your payment overview from the navigation bar.
2. Click on the arrow by your name in the top right corner.
3. Select Payment requests to be taken to your overview.
4. Click Send a payment request or Create a payment plan.
5. Select a tenant by searching by name, house, or alias.
6. Create as many requests as you like by filling out the title, type, the number of months you want the payment to repeat (e.g. monthly rent for 7 months or ‘one-time’ deposit ), due date, and amount.
7. Save or delete each request before adding another one to the payment plan.
8. When you're ready, create your payment plan based on your payment requests.

Alternatively, you can automatically generate a payment plan based on your listing details.

Your Payment Request Overview is an automatically updated record of all the payment requests you have sent to tenants on our platform.

You can filter the requests by payment status or due date. The status of a payment request will be either 'Collected', 'Paid Out', 'Unpaid' or 'Overdue'. If the status of a payment request changes (e.g. it goes from 'Unpaid' to 'Paid'), it will be reflected in this overview, and you will be notified by email.

With Live Payment Tracking, you can also see where your money is. Click Track to see who the money has been collected by or released from (the tenant, HousingAnywhere, or you).

We will continue to expand this feature so stay tuned. We hope our Online Rent Collection system radically improves your experience with the platform and frees up a lot of time in your schedule.

If you have any questions about HousingAnywhere’s Online Rent Collection, please do not hesitate to contact our team or check out our FAQ page.