An issue that facilities often face is that saved credit cards for tenants often expire before the tenant updates their payment method with their new information. When this information isn’t updated in time for the payment due date, payments are late, tenants incur late fees, and tenants become unhappy. Additionally, facilities are left with the task of trying to contact tenants by phone to update their information, which can be time consuming.

Your software provides you with an easy way to keep track of credit cards that have expired or will be expiring soon, and provides you with easy methods of notifying your tenants without making a single call. In fact, you can automate the process of notifying your tenants about credit card expiration. This gives your tenants the chance to update their payment methods and avoid incurring late fees without any time-consuming effort on your part.

This guide will assist you in:

• Monitoring expired credit cards
• Notifying tenants about current or upcoming credit card expiration
  • Via email
  • Via SMS

Monitoring expired credit cards

Your software will inform you when a tenant’s credit card has expired or will be expiring soon through a notification on the Task List.

Clicking Credit Card Expired will open a list of tenants at your facility whose credit cards are currently expired.

Clicking Credit Card Will Expire Soon will open a list of tenants whose credit cards will be expiring the following month. Some things to know about notifications for credit cards that will be expiring soon:

• Notifications will appear on your Task List on the first day of the month.
  
• Tenants who move in during the month and use a credit card that will be expiring the following month will appear on the Task List the day after their move-in takes place.
  
  • Example: A tenant moves in June 3, 2019. They set up Autopay with a credit card that expires in 07/19. On June 4, the tenant will be listed on your Task List as a tenant whose card will be expiring soon.

Notifying tenants about current or upcoming credit card expiration

✅ Settings are required!
In order for automated email notifications to be sent to tenants regarding credit card expiration, you’ll need to adjust your Tenant Settings to include Email Documents Automatically.

You can send tenants notifications via email or SMS when their card is currently expired or will be expiring in the next month. All you'll need to do is prepare the appropriate templates. Setting up the ability to automate the process through your document templates saves you the time of calling each tenant with an expired card one by one.

Sending notifications to tenants via email

✅ Permission is required!
To make changes to email templates, you must have the Edit/Create document templates permission added to your role.

To set up your credit card expiration templates:

• Access your Documents and Emails settings and click the Email tab.
• Under Default Templates, you'll find two templates: Credit Card Expired and Credit Card Expiring Soon. Click ON for the templates.

Although the default Credit Card Expired and Credit Card Expiring Soon templates are set up for you, you can edit them to your liking. If you make edits:

• Ensure that the Triggered by action of Credit card expired has been added for expired cards before saving your changes.
• Ensure that the Triggered by action of Credit card expiring soon has been added before saving your changes.

Once your templates are setup, a tenant will receive a an email when their card expires or will expire within the next month. Notifications are sent on the 1st of the month. For example, if a card is going to expire in August, a notification that the card will be expiring soon will be sent on July 1st and a notification that the card has expired will be sent on August 1st.

To check and see if your tenant has opened your email, check the History tab on their tenant page.

📖 You can read more about your software's Document and Emails settings on our help site.

Sending notifications to tenants via SMS 

✅ Permission is required!
To make changes to email templates, you must have the Edit SMS templates permission added to your role.

To set up your credit card expiration SMS templates:

• Access your SMS settings.
• Under Default Templates, you'll find two templates: Credit Card Expired and Credit Card Expiring Soon. Click ON for the templates.

Although the default Credit Card Expired and Credit Card Expiring Soon templates are set up for you, you can edit them to your liking. If you make edits:

• Ensure that the Triggered by action of Credit card expired has been added for expired cards before saving your changes.
• Ensure that the Triggered by action of Credit card expiring soon has been added before saving your changes.
• Remember that if a tenant does have the SMS box checked next to their phone number on their tenant page, they will not receive text messages.

To check that a text was successfully sent to your tenant, check the History tab on their tenant page.

📖 You can read more about your software's SMS settings on our help site.