Rent arrears are one of the most time-consuming and stressful parts of running a letting agency. For every tenant who pays late, someone on your team is writing reminder emails, making calls, updating spreadsheets, and potentially chasing landlords who want answers.
The good news: the entire process — from pre-due reminders to overdue escalations — can be fully automated. Here's how to set it up.
Despite the availability of property management software with automation built in, many agencies still manage rent chasing via a combination of bank statement review, sticky notes, and email templates. The reasons are usually:
On the last point: well-written automated reminders are consistently better-received than a hurried phone call at 5pm. Tenants appreciate the advance notice, and many simply forget to pay — a friendly reminder the day before is a service, not a chase.
Here's the sequence that works best for most agencies:
Friendly email reminding the tenant their rent is due in 5 days. Include the amount, the due date, and a link to their payment portal. Open rate at this stage is high — tenants are expecting it.
A brief nudge the day before. "Your rent of £X is due tomorrow." Short, clear, not alarming.
The rent didn't arrive. A polite but firm email noting the payment is now overdue. Ask them to pay or contact the agency if there's an issue.
A follow-up. Slightly more urgent in tone. Mention that you may need to contact the landlord if payment isn't received.
At this point a human call is usually warranted. Your software should have flagged the payment as overdue and alerted your team to make direct contact.
If unresolved, begin your formal arrears process. Document every communication — automated or manual — for any future legal proceedings.
In Settings → Automation, set the day of the month rent is due. Propflow generates a payment record for each active tenancy automatically each month.
Set how many days before the due date you want the pre-due reminder to send. The default is 3 days, but you can choose 1–14. Enable multi-stage reminders if you want both a 5-day and 1-day notice.
Turn on the overdue chase sequence. By default, emails go out at Day +1, +3, +7, +14, and +28 after the due date. You can customise which milestones trigger notifications and the email content.
Propflow sends reminders via Resend from your agency's domain (or a Propflow subdomain). Ensure your email is configured so messages land in inboxes, not spam.
Mark a test payment as overdue in your dashboard and confirm the email fires correctly. Check the tenant-facing email looks professional and includes the correct property address and amount.
Automated reminders dramatically reduce late payments, but the most reliable way to collect rent on time is Direct Debit. When tenants pay by DD, the bank pulls the money automatically — no action required on either side.
If you're not already using Direct Debit for most of your portfolio, it's worth the setup overhead. Most agencies using DD see arrears rates drop to under 2% of payments.
Propflow supports tracking payments regardless of method — Direct Debit, bank transfer, standing order, or card. The reminder system applies to all payment types, so even DD payments get a pre-due notice as a belt-and-braces approach.
Landlords hate surprises. Even a brief "your tenant at 14 High Street is 3 days overdue — we're following up" email is far better than silence followed by a delayed remittance. Propflow's owner portal shows landlords their rent status in real time, which reduces the "is the rent in yet?" calls dramatically.
The rent collection process in Northern Ireland follows largely the same practical workflow, but the legal framework differs in important ways — particularly around notice periods for non-payment and the Private Tenancies Act 2022. If you manage properties across both jurisdictions, your arrears escalation process should account for these differences. See our guide to NI vs England landlord law →
Automated emails sent from noreply@yourplatform.com feel impersonal and can't be replied to — which defeats the purpose of the overdue stage, where you want the tenant to get in touch. Use your agency's real email address so replies come to your inbox.
A reminder that says "Dear Tenant" with a generic property reference is far less effective than one that includes the tenant's name, the exact address, the amount due, and the due date. Modern platforms merge these fields automatically — there's no reason to send generic emails.
Some agencies disable automated chasing after a tenant complains it was sent in error. The right response is to fix the exception (mark the payment as received, or pause reminders for that tenancy) rather than turn off the system for everyone. One edge case shouldn't cost you the time savings across 50 other tenancies.
If your software logs automated emails but you're also making phone calls and sending WhatsApp messages outside the system, you have an incomplete communication record. In any dispute or legal proceeding, a gap in the documented timeline weakens your position. Log every contact — or use a platform that captures them all.
Automated chasing handles the communication side, but it shouldn't replace the human judgement call on when to start formal proceedings. The standard practice is to issue a Section 21 or Section 8 notice when arrears exceed two months — don't let automated reminders lull you into waiting longer than that threshold.
Once you've set up automated rent collection, track these metrics monthly:
Not all property management software includes automation — or includes it without an additional charge. When evaluating platforms, check:
See our full comparison of property management software for UK letting agents →
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