Customer story
Solo landlord killed Venmo-for-rent and recovered $412/mo in late fees
Six units, one spouse, zero property managers. Switching rent collection to TenantAssist ACH ended the "did you send Venmo?" text thread forever.
Derek L. • 6 units • Austin, Texas • Published February 11, 2026
“I stopped chasing rent. That is a complete sentence.”
97%
On-time rent rate
↑ from 71%
$412
Monthly late fees recovered
< 30 min
Hours/mo on rent admin
↓ from 5 hrs
$0.80
ACH fee per payment
The challenge
- Tenants paid via a mix of Venmo, Zelle, mailed checks, and one cash-in-envelope — each with a different arrival day and different note conventions.
- Chasing late rent meant sending three texts and a "did this hit?" screenshot every month.
- No unified ledger meant Derek couldn’t tell a lender what his on-time payment rate actually was when he tried to refinance.
What we did
- Moved every tenant onto TenantAssist ACH with auto-pay, and card-pay as a backup for the two tenants without checking accounts.
- Turned on automatic next-month charge generation so every lease self-bills on the 1st without Derek touching it.
- Enabled receipts + a per-tenant ledger so tenants can pull their own payment history for renter’s insurance or tax prep.
- Connected Stripe Connect so payouts land in Derek’s bank 2 business days after each tenant pays, with fees itemized.
“The ACH fee is lower than the gas it used to cost me to deposit checks. Math is math.”
The results
- On-time payment rate jumped from 71% to 97% in the first billing cycle, driven almost entirely by ACH auto-pay.
- Derek recovered $412/mo in previously-unenforced late fees because TenantAssist applies the per-lease late-fee rule automatically on day 6.
- Rent admin dropped from ~5 hours/month (including bank runs) to under 30 minutes, mostly spent reviewing the payout dashboard.
- He got a lender-ready 12-month on-time payment rate export that sped up his cash-out refi by roughly three weeks.