A big part of finding success in the rental industry is keeping organized. Believe it or not, it’s not always about having the best rentals in the area but about being able to keep your business running smoothly. Time and other investments are quickly lost when you don’t have things in order. Sometimes, you need business tools like a tenant tracker to succeed.
Carefully tracking all tenancies is a sure way to keep your business running smoothly. From recording rental transactions to tracking a tenant’s history through your rental screening, this can all be done with the best efficiency and cost-effectiveness when organized.
What tools are you using to ensure your rental business success?
Today, learn about tenant tracker tools that make it simple for landlords like you to stay organized. Administrative work doesn’t have to be a struggle when running a rental business—learn how to smooth out this process today.
Table Of Contents On Tenant Trackers
Tenant tracking sounds like a scary concept, but it’s actually the simple matter of making sure you are on top of your business processes. Are you ready to implement tools that will make your business make more sense? Walk through the process with us today.
- What Is A Tenant Tracker Tool?
- Why Landlords Need Tenant Tracking And Landlord Tools
- Using Tenant Trackers: Necessary Features
- FAQs: How To Check Tenant Tracker And Other Questions
- Utilize Trackers To Improve Your Business
What Is A Tenant Tracker Tool?
Tools used to track a tenant’s history through credit and background checks are often referred to as tenant trackers. These tools are helpful during applicant screening when a landlord gets a glimpse into a prospective tenant’s character and financial history. This information enables landlords to make the best choice of tenant for their property.
But tenant tracking is more than just tenant screening for many landlords. Tools used to track the start of a tenancy are often able to continue to track the tenancy. Things like rent collection, tenant communication, and documentation can also be tracked on these types of portals. Often, these tools are called property management or landlord tools.
Different tool kits have distinct features, and that’s part of why one term, tenant tracker tool, has been used to reference various types of tools. It can be confusing at first, but landlords need different types of tenant tracking at other points of the rental process. That’s why so many various tools exist.
Don’t Get Confused: Tenant Tracker
There is one more point of potential confusion. There’s a third-party tenant screening service called Tenant Tracker. This is one option for tenant screening, but it isn’t the only option for tracking despite the name.
The critical point to take away from this is that the information gathered and reported by Tenant Tracker is similar to other tenant screening portals. Ultimately, you can decide which screening service best fits your business.
Why Landlords Need Tenant Tracking And Landlord Tools
What is it about property management tools such as tenant trackers that make a landlord’s workflow more effective? There are many points to consider when thinking about why these services and portals can be a great addition to your toolkit.
#1: Choose Fitting Tenants
Let’s begin at the start of the rental process. When you list a rental, you’ll want to find tenants to fill that vacancy as soon as possible. This means that you’ll start collecting rental applications, and you will need to screen those tenants.
Keeping track of multiple applications, background checks, credit checks, and more can get complicated. Using a tenant tracking tool can allow you to see where you are with each application and review each report as it comes in. Employment and income verification can be easily seen and recorded through the right third-party screening tools.
Tracking potential tenants’ applications through these types of portals keeps everything organized, clear, and easy to review.
#2: Avoid Legal Trouble
Another great reason to monitor your rentals through tracking tools and administration help is to avoid legal trouble. Tools will keep your records, communication, and documentation on file. All of this will make it easy to reference documents if a court issue arises or if you need to charge fees for late rent.
Having precise tracking of all this information is a huge help when potential issues arise. Sometimes, it can help you avoid court altogether and clear up confusion with your tenants.
#3: Show Your Profitability
Are you considering a loan, refinancing, or selling your business? Your records through tracking and management tools can show how well your business is doing. Demonstrate cash flow, property expenses, tenant vacancies, and more by simply referencing your tools.
#4: Keep Up With Deadlines
Most trackers can be set up to remind you of upcoming tenancy end dates, and that can help you minimize vacancies. Keeping up with end dates means you can keep up with potential lease renewals or start looking for new tenants before the current ones move out. This small change can make a big difference in profits.
#5: Rent Tracker For Tenants: Valuable For Everyone
Another benefit of some management tools is the tenant side of things. Tenants who can send messages through a transparent portal, review their rent payments and late fees, and reference essential documents feel more comfortable and secure. Tenants appreciate the transparency of such tools, and you may get more long-term tenants when using them.
Using Tenant Trackers: Necessary Features
Landlords looking for tenant tracking and management tools are often overwhelmed by options. There are many different features, and they are all presented differently among these options. What you should look for depends on your specific business.
However, landlords generally agree that the following features are worth the investment when obtaining new tools for your rental business:
Tenant Screening Assistance
Quality screening assistance can revolutionize your business, from running complete reports to following up with income verification and background checks. This is the #1 tenant tracking service that landlords need help with. Any third-party service that helps you with tenant tracking should have this service at a minimum.
Verified, Accurate Information
Any information gathered by tracking services and shared with you should be verified and accurate. Unverifiable information or information outside the scope of legal collection cannot and should not be used by landlords to make tenant decisions. Be sure to work only with companies that take this aspect of their work seriously.
Document Organization
Many property management tools allow landlords to upload documents relevant to specific properties for easy access. No more digging through files to find what you need—simply upload it when each lease begins so you have the documentation on file.
Tenant Communication
Some tools prioritize tenant communication through automated reminders about rent, building-wide announcements, and even service requests. Landlords may prefer platforms that offer this type of support.
Rent Collection And Management
Whether you use a separate rent collection portal or a management portal that combines it all, tracking rent is critical. You need to know who paid, when they paid, and if the payment went through. High-quality portals will enable this tracking, late fee collection, and late rent reminders.
Start-To-Finish Management
Some tenant trackers track more than just tenant history and screening—they track your relationship with a tenant from start to finish. Through screening, lease signing, lease renewals, and move-out dates, the portals guide you through every step to ensure nothing is missed or misplaced.
Tracking Rental Applications With RentPrep
Looking for a high-quality tenant screening service to track down a potential tenant’s history? Look no further.
Here at RentPrep, we offer a wide range of tenant screening packages at various price points. Depending on how many applications need to be reviewed, what type of information you want to see, and whether or not you wish to add any other services, you can select the appropriate package.
Take a look at our options today to get started with a great tenant tracker!
FAQs: How To Check A Tenant Tracker And Other Questions
Here are the most frequently asked questions when it comes to tracking tenants.
How do tenant tracker tools help landlords and property managers?
Anyone who has worked in the rental industry knows how many moving parts there are to keep track of. Even if you are just managing one property, you still have tenant screening, rent payment schedules, deposits, lease documents, tenant communication, and more to monitor. If you don’t have a sound system to manage all this information, you may make preventable mistakes.
Using tenant tracker tools for tenant screening and other property management tools to simplify how you handle rent collection can make a huge difference in how your business runs. With the right tools, you’ll waste less time and money on processes that could be much more straightforward.
The goal of any tool for landlords is to make processes more efficient and manageable. Consider which parts of your rental business slow you down—is there a tool to help? It’s time to find out and improve your business’s overall profitability.
How can I check a tenant tracker for a tenant’s history?
No matter what tenant tracker tool you use, the only way to find out information about a tenant’s background is to run a background and credit check while doing tenant screening. For most trackers, you will need the applicant’s permission to view this information as it is required by law. Applicants know and expect these checks to be completed.
Different tenant screening services offer different types of information, and landlords should always choose the service that aligns best with their screening needs.
That being said, most reliable sites will include the following information whenever reviewing an applicant:
- ID information
- Rental history
- Information reported by previous landlords to relevant agencies
- Employment history
- Income verification
- Bounced check history
- Credit accounts
- Past criminal convictions
Is tenant tracking limited by laws?
Yes. There are specific laws and regulations regarding how information can be collected about an individual, who must permit this type of tracking, and what kind of information can be used by landlords. Landlords cannot use information about race, religion, family status, and similar categories when making tenant decisions, so it cannot be included in any tenant tracking.
What tools do I need to track tenants and rent accurately?
There is no precise answer to this question; the needs of every landlord are specific to their management style and business.
If you already have a great tenant screening process, you don’t need to invest too much in tenant tracking when trying new management tools. Instead, you may want to focus on rental collection tools that ensure tenants have an easy way to pay that you can keep up with.
Ideally, landlords will have their own systems or a great management tool to help with the following:
- Tenant applications
- Tenant screening
- Rent collection
- Document organization
- Service requests and contracting
- Tenant communication
If these areas are handled clearly, your rental business will likely succeed. Think about where your transactions are slipping through the cracks and costing you too much. These are the places where you should start focusing. There’s always more to learn as a landlord—let these tools assist.
Utilize Trackers To Improve Your Business
Tenant trackers, and similar tools, come in many shapes and forms. The right tools for your business will depend on where there are hiccups in your process. For many landlords, the biggest hangup lies in the tenant screening process, and that’s often where tenant trackers focus.
Tenant tracker tools focused on rental applicants enable you to:
- Run tenant screening reports easily
- Check the progress of tenant screening reports
- Check a tenant’s rental history
You can also expand these tracking tools into tracking rent, managing tenant communications, and charging late rent payments as needed. No matter where your business needs help, business tools will allow you to get a handle on the process. Tenant trackers are just one type of tool—invest in finding the right tools for your current business needs.