Handling rental payments for your investment property doesn’t have to be complicated, especially if you’re using RentBetter! The platform gives you more control over rental payments to ensure you get paid on time, every time. With automated reminders, receipting and income reporting, you can benefit from efficient and hassle-free rent collection.

Find out about how Rental Payments work in this guide.

Setting up and collecting rental payments from your tenant is simple. Here is a quick overview of the steps required on RentBetter:

Managing payments through the platform offers some great advantages. It means the payments will run according to the agreed schedule, no more checking bank accounts and entering data into spreadsheets, and it will completely automate a task that is usually quite tedious - no more chasing payments!

To create a Rental Payment schedule you will first need to set up your lease. Navigate to the My Properties page and click on 'Lease Set up'. You will be guided through the steps to set up your lease. In the second section under 'Payments' you will go through the steps to set up your payment schedule.

Step 1: Enter the weekly rental amount and the payment frequency for the schedule. Rent can be collected either Weekly, Fortnightly or Monthly.

Step 2: To collect payments through the RentBetter platform, select 'Yes' under the question 'Do you want RentBetter to collect the rent payments?'.

Step 3: Enter the date when you would like the payment schedule through RentBetter to begin. Typically, this would coincide with the start date of the lease. however, if you already have an existing lease, you should select the date from when the tenant is currently paid up to.

You will be able to view a preview of what the schedule and payment periods would look like in the section below:

On the final step of the set-up, you can review the details of the rental payments. The main points you need to review to ensure they are correct are highlighted in yellow.

Once everything is set up and you have sent it to your tenants, you can view the full details of the schedule from the 'Rental Payments' page.

The tenants will be invited to connect to your lease and requested to set up their payment method on the platform via their tenant dashboard:

Once they have set up their payment method, the payments will run automatically according to the set schedule.

You might consider collecting an 'Early First Payment' from your tenant at the beginning of a new lease with new tenants. This payment is requested before they move in and is designed to provide you with a first payment ahead of the start date and the first scheduled payment.

If you choose to collect an early first payment, your tenant will be notified to complete the payment by the due date you have set in their account on the platform.

To set up to collect the first payment early, select 'Yes' under the question 'Do you want to collect the first payment early?'. Then set how many payment periods you would like to collect early.

The maximum amount you can collect as an early payment is two payment periods so for example, if your payments are set up as fortnightly, you can collect up to two fortnights early.

Once you send the lease to your tenant they will be invited to get set up on RentBetter and once they have signed the lease and added a payment method, they will be able to complete the early first payment step on their dashboard:

If you wish to have your tenants make their rental payments outside the platform, it just requires a little more work in terms of manually tracking the payments and marking each one as paid on your payments page.

To create a Rental Payment schedule you will first need to set up your lease. Navigate to the My Properties page and click on 'Lease Set up'. You will be guided through the steps to set up your lease. In the second section under 'Payments' you will go through the steps to set up your payment schedule.

Step 1: Enter the weekly rental amount and the payment frequency for the schedule. The rent can be collected either Weekly, Fortnightly or Monthly.

Step 2: In the following section, you will be asked how you would like to collect the rental payments. To collect payments through the RentBetter platform, select 'No' under the question 'Do you want RentBetter to collect the rent payments?'.

Step 3: You can then enter the date when you would like the payment schedule through RentBetter to begin. Typically, this would coincide with the start date of the lease. however, if you already have an existing lease, you should select the date from when the tenant is currently paid up to.

Once you have finalised the set-up and sent it to your tenant, you will be able to start tracking your payments manually from the rental payments page.

You can use the 'Mark as paid' function next to each payment period to mark payments as paid as you receive them from your tenant.

You can view your rent schedule at any time to see where your tenant is paid up to

Navigate to the 'My Properties' page. On your property card, you will see a list menu and under the Manage My Property section, click on Rental Payments.

If your tenant has made a payment directly to you, you can mark each period received as paid. To do this, locate the payment period that you wish to mark off, and click on the 'Mark as Paid' button next to that period.

Enter the receipt date for the payment and then click the 'Mark as Paid' button. Once confirmed it will show as paid on your schedule in green and you'll be able to view the receipt.

When rent is paid partially, simply enter the amount paid, mark it as paid, and the system will display the outstanding balance.

You can click on any line in the payment schedule and it will bring up the history of the transaction on the right-hand panel.

You can make changes to your rent schedule such as adjusting the frequency of payments, updating the rental amount or ending a lease and payment schedule.

To make changes to your lease, click on 'Lease set up' and then the 'Actions' button on the top right:

On the next screen, you'll be able to select from a list of actions available for your lease.

Payments on RentBetter are set to continue on an ongoing basis unless the lease is terminated in the platform. If you need to end the lease and payments, you can take the steps below:

You may like to edit the payment frequency and/or the rental amount for your tenants. If you need to adjust your schedule, you can take the steps below:

To ensure payments arrive on the due date, the system will run payments slightly early to enable the funds to settle in your account first thing in the morning on the due date.

We send out email and SMS notifications to your tenants ahead of the payment to let them know about the timing and if required, they can contact us to adjust the processing time.

If you need to adjust the processing date of your payments, reach out to the team at info@rentbetter.com.au or via the support chat and we can assist further.

We don't hold funds, and we operate more like a switch. When your tenant’s bank, financial institution or card provider confirms the payment is successful, the funds are settled in your account, a receipt is sent out and the payment schedule on the platform is updated.

If the payment is not successful, a notification is sent to you and your tenant and the system automatically retries the payment 24 hours later.

This process is repeated and if the payment continues to fail the messages escalate to notify the tenant they’re at risk of being in breach and the next steps required. Our customers have found that having this information in real-time helps avoid issues as they can intervene early in the process.

We always encourage communicating with the tenant to confirm what may be going on. Our system will try up to a total of 4 times before informing the tenant they may be in breach of their lease, as well as informing you.

If the payment is not successful, a notification is sent to you and your tenant and the system automatically retries the payment 24 hours later. This process is repeated and if the payment continues to fail the messages escalate to notify the tenant they’re at risk of being in breach and the next steps required.

If the situation escalates and the tenant starts to be in arrears, we would recommend having a look at our post clarifying the process of tenant arrears - https://rentbetter.com.au/view/tenant-late-pay-rent/.

The system is set up for a single payment from one party to avoid a situation where one pays their portion and the other does not and you are left chasing multiple parties for payment.

You can expect a single payment of the total amount for each payment period.

When your tenants set up their payment method on the platform, we send out email and SMS notifications to remind them of their upcoming payment obligations on the ongoing schedule. The notifications include details of the amount due and payment frequency, ensuring that tenants are well-informed and prepared for their rental payments.

If your tenants are paying outside of RentBetter they will receive email reminders ahead of each payment period.

The way rent in advance works in most states is that you're only able to charge a certain period (e.g. 2 weeks) and then once the tenant has lived in the property for those 2 weeks, they will have used up the rent in advance and then they must pay for the next rental period. You typically can't charge a tenant for another rental period until they have used up the previous one.

If your tenant has offered to pay 'ahead' of the schedule on an ongoing basis, then you are welcome to let us know and we can assist in setting this up. Whilst it is not part of the normal payment set-up, custom payment arrangements can be accommodated in the platform.

While rental providers cannot typically request this, they can accept such an offer if the tenant proposes it. If a tenant offers to pay a lump sum of rent upfront, you can accommodate this in the RentBetter platform in a couple of ways:

Direct Payment: The tenant can pay the lump sum directly to your account. You can then mark it as paid on the rent schedule in the platform.

Tenant Payment via RentBetter: The tenant can log into their RentBetter account, visit their rental payments page, and click on the 'Pay now' button next to the payment periods they wish to pay for.

No, RentBetter does not charge any extra fees to your tenants for having payments run through the platform. If your tenant chooses to set up their payments via credit/debit card, there is a small transaction fee on the payment but this is clearly marked when they set up on the platform and add their payment method. The recommended way is for the tenant to pay via their bank account which is free.

If your tenant can see that the transaction has reversed and the funds have been returned to their account, it is by the bank as there were insufficient funds in the account at the time of processing.

Typically the bank will withdraw the funds at the time of payment but if not available, they will reverse the payment and send out a notification that the payment was not successful. The system will automatically retry the payment in 24 hours, so your tenant should keep the funds in their account so it is successful on the following attempt.

Rental payments are set to continue on an ongoing basis unless the lease is terminated in the platform. To take action to terminate your lease and payments you can follow the steps detailed here. (Lease set up > Actions > End Tenancy).

The platform allows you to issue and sign a notice to the tenant advising of a change to the rental price. To adjust the rental price and send a notice to your tenant you can follow the steps detailed here. (Lease set up > Actions > Adjust Rent).

Each state has different rules and guidelines on how much you can increase the rent and the frequency when you can apply the increases. Generally speaking, fixed-term agreements can only be increased once in a 12-month period (usually after the fixed-term ends) and you must serve the correct notice form.

Where the tenant is on a periodic (continuing) lease, in most states you must give them 60 days notice of the increase in writing.

We have a handy article here that should guide you along the correct path. It includes links to each state's rules and the relevant forms required.

To download a rental ledger, you can visit the rental payments page and click on the "export schedule" button located at the top right corner. From there, you can choose to export the rent schedule into either a PDF or Excel sheet format.

The PDF version will provide you with a professional ledger containing your and the tenant's details at the top, along with all the necessary details of the rent schedule, including payment dates and outstanding accounts.

Have more questions on rental payments? Reach out to our friendly team via the support chat or email info@rentbetter.com.au and we’ll be happy to help.