At Yardi, we are constantly exploring ways to help you and your team operate more efficiently. With additional conveniences and functionalities, our payment processing solutions have become even more robust. ACH Account Validation reduces fraud Skip the high cost of fraud. With the new ACH Account Validation feature, you can reduce fraudulent payments. It’s also a convenient way to decrease data entry errors that result in returns. Before initiating a payment, ACH Account Validation authenticates a resident’s bank account using a micro deposit. The resident must verify the deposit details before completing a payment. Residents initiate the process, eliminating the chance of staff keying errors. ACH Account Validation is in compliance with the WEB Debit Account Validation Rule which takes effect March 19, 2021. PayNearMe makes walk-in payments even easier Yardi has partnered with PayNearMe to take our walk-in payment system (WIPS) to the next level of convenience. The PayNearMe partnership allows residents make payments at more than 27,000 retail locations across the nation. These locations are as convenient as the local CVS or 7-Eleven. To improve ease and accuracy, residents can download a unique barcode to their phone which then allows them to easily connect to the RentCafe Resident app. Make payments and earn credit You know the satisfaction that comes with earning points on your credit card? Our new Bill Pay payment method is even better. When you pay vendors with a Yardi virtual credit card, you earn an annual credit. You can also dodge the per-transaction fees you used to pay with check and ACH transactions. The new Yardi virtual credit card makes vendor payments completely automated, seamless and contactless. Fee-free upgrades on Payment Processing Want the latest features in the Payment Processing platform? Upgrade now at no cost! Get the newest...

There are two groups that want you to optimize online payments: your residents and your staff. According to the National Apartment Association, about 79 percent of residents prefer to pay their bills online. It’s quick, easy, and means one less task to occupy their time each month. Your staff wants to enjoy a workweek without opening mail, scanning checks, trips to the bank, or data entry into your real estate accounting software. When you increase adaptation to online payment processing, everyone wins. Check out these six tips to boost online payment enrollment. Provide easy access to the payment portal. Consider adding a button directly on your property website or prominently displayed on the resident portal. Make enrollment easy for your residents. Consider creating a step-by-step how-to guide on enrollment that includes screenshots. The text and visual aids will help your residents, resulting in fewer calls to your office for help. Designate a tablet or computer to online payment enrollment. When a resident visits the leasing office with a rent check, agents can then offer to help them setup online payments on the spot! Inform residents of their options. Some residents may be unfamiliar with the options available or not understand the lingo. Broadcast which options they have– ACH, Text to Pay, reoccurring EFT—and well as what each payment option means. Create an awareness campaign including emails, social media posts, and print posters at the leasing office (especially near the drop box). Consider a catchy slogan and imagery for the campaign that will stick in residents’ minds. As a last resort, create an incentive program. Consider gift certificates, prizes, or small discounts off the rent. The incentives are an upfront investment with long-term payoffs. Learn more about online Payment Processing with...

Online payment processing is quickly becoming the industry standard. If you’re on the fence about making the switch, here are eight excellent reasons for you to upgrade with confidence. 8 Reasons to Upgrade to Online Payments Gain the competitive advantage. Research by the Association for Finance Professionals reveals that nearly 80 percent of organizations are transitioning to electronic payments. If you’re one of the few businesses not making that transition, you may lose clients to your competitors. Eliminate redundant data entry. Using an online payment system cuts back on data entry and subsequent errors. This is especially true when it integrates with your property management accounting software. After a payment is made, user data automatically populates in the system. Offer flexibility to your residents. Nearly 80 percent of residents prefer to pay rent electronically. With online payments, residents can easily submit payments 24/7 from their desktop or mobile device. Enjoy fewer late payments. By increasing convenience, many users have witnessed a decrease in delinquencies. Mariana Estrada, VP of Operations at Roscoe Properties says, “For the month of May, we collected 95% of payments, on time and electronically, thanks to Payment Processing. That’s massive! That’s money in the bank without any staff intervention.” Lower costs for you and the environment when you go paperless. An article in CFO Magazine explains how electronic payments work out to be 10 times cheaper than paper checks. Among the data, analysts note that the total cost of an ACH transfer is between 25 cents and 60 cents. (The range depends on several factors.) A paper check, however, sets businesses back between $1.25 and $3.00. Decrease the need for storage. Paper record storage becomes a costly battle for square footage. With electronic payments, all of your data is securely stored...

We could all use just a little more time to get everything checked off our to-do lists. If you’re a property manager at any size property, you and your team have a seemingly endless list of daily tasks, from interacting with new prospects to taking resident payments. Fortunately, modern technology is evolving to help speed things up at work. Advances in online services mean many processes that once had to be done by hand can now be automated. Recently, a few clients have shared quantifiable time savings they’re seeing at their businesses as a result of implementing better property management software. Take a look to see where you could be saving hours every month. Online Applications: 15+ minutes per application How much time do onsite teams spend entering application data? Mallory Monsma, marketing leader at NALS, estimates that online applications save its leasing agents 15 minutes each. In August of 2016, the team processed 347 applications, resulting in a time savings of 87 hours. If you’re using esignatures and completing the leasing process entirely online, your time savings will be even greater. Not to mention all the savings you’ll accrue surrounding printing, mailing, paper costs and physical storage. Online Payments: 4+ minutes per payment Monsma says that automated payment processing saves at least two minutes per check and a 20-minute roundtrip to the bank for every 10 checks. These numbers might seem small, but they quickly add up across a portfolio. In a month with 11,000 online payments, the NALS team saved 44,000 minutes (733 hours). Getting onboard with online payments also adds convenience for renters and speeds up cash flow. Roscoe Properties collects 95% of its rent electronically, quickly and on time. Mariana Estrada, vice president of operations, enthused, “That’s massive! That’s money...

It’s true that hard work pays off, and as the Yardi Canada team based in Toronto has discovered, that hard work can also be rewarding in unexpected ways. In summer 2016 Yardi introduced a collaboration with payment processing solutions provider BluePay to enable electronic rent payments in Canada that make the lives of property managers easier (and funds flow faster), and soon MasterCard credit card payments will be another convenient option. Peter Altobelli, vice president of sales and general manager for Yardi Canada, commented, “This collaboration joins Yardi’s property management solutions with BluePay’s experience in processing billions of dollars of transactions annually for thousands of organizations. Working together represents a giant step toward making electronic payments the secure, efficient rent payment method of choice in Canada.” And while serving their customers better than ever, Yardi Canada has enjoyed collaborating with their U.S.-based Yardi Payment Processing team members. Working together to create not only a superior product offering but also a stronger team has been a truly positive experience. That’s the experience that Rosa Mota, a technical account manager on the Payment Processing implementation team, has happily shared. Rosa elaborated, “I’ve been assigned to help the cash management team in Canada get up to speed on the exciting developments with Payment Processing. Our electronic payments collaboration with BluePay eliminates the lengthy process our clients used to endure to receive their monthly rent payments. Now they get their funds within hours. I spent two weeks in the Toronto office working to build implementation documentation, and showing product demos.” Rosa also completed a client implementation while in Toronto, which afforded a valuable hands-on experience for the account manager. Culture of Camaraderie Yardi Canada includes three locations in Toronto, Saskatoon and Vancouver, each with different areas of product...

Cash and money order payments are not ideal for property managers. Susceptible to fraud and inconvenient compared to electronic funds transfers or online payments, just about all property management firms will tell you that they don’t want rent remitted this way. But sometimes, that’s how residents want to pay. Now there’s an alternative. a new service that eliminates the risk of money order fraud or the hassle of taking cash and is efficient and convenient for residents and property managers alike. It’s called the Walk-in Payment System (WIPS™), and it’s available as part of Yardi Payment Processing™. Here’s how it works: Using the Walk-in Payment System (WIPS), residents can pay rent in cash at over 18,000 participating convenience stores or big box retail locations. Payments are seamlessly transferred to the property management companies’ Yardi Voyager® system. “Residents get the convenience of a one-stop experience. Property management companies gain efficiencies, increase the likelihood of collecting rent on time and reduce money order fraud,” said David Kessler, vice president, affordable housing for Yardi. Property managers who prefer not to process cash or money order transactions will find WIPS to be a secure and reliable alternative for collecting rent payments. Find out more about it and other ways that Yardi Payment Processing makes collecting rent easier on Yardi.com....