It’s with great excitement that we introduce you to our latest update, version 5.0! The big headliner of this release is tenant screening with credit and background check reports! However, this update actually includes a LOT more under the hood. So let’s dig in…
Tenant Screening
As mentioned, tenant screening is the largest new feature of this release. In partnership with Transunion, you can now require tenant screening reports (credit and background checks) with your lease applications!
Starting at just $29 for the Basic report, payable by applicants or your company, you’ll receive a full credit report with a new Resident Score (credit score like FICO custom tailored for the rental industry), a nationwide criminal background check, sex offender, OFAC, most wanted search, and SSN verification. Also available is a Premium report that includes an enhanced identity report and a nationwide eviction search.
To get started with tenant screening, we encourage you to review the following detailed articles. If you have any questions about getting started, reach out to our Relax Team at relax@rentpost.com.
- Enable Tenant Screening on your Account
- Requesting a Screening Report
- Collecting an Application Fee
- Viewing a Screening Report
“Management” Accounting “Books”
We’ve now included a new set of “books” that can be used for management operations. It’s called your “management” books and the chart of accounts can be customized to fit your management needs. For more information on these books and the difference between your old books (now called “trust”), please see this article.
Additional accounting features and functionality will continue to be added around these two sets of books with future updates.
Lease Applications
Lease application support was added to the “Screening” tab almost 2 years ago, and while the functionality of lease applications and the screening pipeline was quite robust and customizable, the usage of this newer feature didn’t have the best uptake.
The addition of screening reports with your lease applications, something we planned before introducing lease applications, only increases the awesomeness of the screening features in RentPost. There is a lot of functionality and customization with screening in RentPost now – seriously!
Our actual lease application (what applicants use) has received some vast improvements and features. There is a lot of improved usability (desktop and mobile), identity verification steps, a review portal for applicants allowing them to work more closely with co-signers, the ability to pay for screening reports and lease application fees and much more! We’re not sure you’ll find a better lease application anywhere. But we’d love to hear your suggestions and thoughts – give it a try!
Lease Application Fees
Yes, you can collect lease application fees. It’s also very flexible with your screening reports. Your company can pay for the screening reports and charge a flat lease application fee, or you can have the applicants pay for the screening reports in addition to an application fee, or no application fee and just have applicants pay for the reports. It’s up to you. You can even charge different application fees per application.
For more details on collecting application fees, see this article.
Other Notable Mentions
A lot went into version 5.0 that isn’t represented as a visual feature, but sets up our technology platform for future features. Internally, these are things we’re very excited about.
The addition of the “management” books came with a huge accounting system upgrade that enables us to do a LOT more from an accounting perspective. Over time we will be adding additional accounting features as we have more tools at our disposal.
Our GraphQL API has seen massive growth and improvements. We now have 2 applications running on our new API (the lease application and our onboarding application for new accounts). As part of these API updates we have systems in place that will allow companies to access to this API, themselves – inquire soon.
There is a new user system. You may have noticed that you can sign into your account with your username or email address. This will cut down on the confusion with tenants creating a manager account by accident, forgetting their username, or creating multiple accounts and being unable to sign into the correct one. This was a frequent issue that many managers likely dealt with, and our support team. Additionally, this new user system paves a clear path forward for two-factor authentication, a pre-requisite for sending credit payments.
We’ve also moved to a new database engine with large database changes. You may notice some improved page loading times. This also allows for us to ensure even better data integrity, something we take very seriously.
As always, we welcome your input on this latest update. Some of you have already reached out to us; some with issues which we’ve quickly resolved and others with excitement and praise. Keep ’em coming!
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