Collecting Rent, Managing Payouts, and Using the Ledger

Connect a payout account, collect rent online (or record it manually), and keep an automatic income and expense ledger for every property you manage.

Go to Payments →

Connecting your bank account for payouts

Before rent can reach your bank, connect a payout account under Settings → Payouts. VerticalRent uses Stripe Connect (Express accounts) to move money — click Connect Bank Account and you're redirected to Stripe's secure onboarding flow to enter your bank details and verify your identity. VerticalRent never stores your banking credentials.

Connecting unlocks:

• Your share of split application fees deposited directly to you.
• Rent payments deposited on the next business day.
• Automatic 1099-K reporting at year-end.
• Bank-grade security through Stripe's banking partners.

Once connected, the Payouts page shows your linked bank name and last 4 digits, plus live status indicators for Receiving payments and Payouts enabled. If Stripe still needs more information from you, a Continue Setup prompt appears until onboarding is fully complete.

How much of each rent payment you keep

VerticalRent keeps a small platform fee on every online rent payment — by default 3% of the rent amount — and the rest transfers straight to your connected bank account via Stripe Connect's application-fee split. If a tenant pays by debit or credit card instead of bank transfer (ACH), Stripe's standard card processing fee (2.9% + $0.30) is added on top of the platform fee for that payment. Every rent payment record shows the exact platform fee and your net payout amount side by side.

Tracking rent payments

The Rent Payments tab lists every charge tied to your active leases, filterable by All, Upcoming, Paid, and Late, with a live count badge on each tab. Each row shows the tenant, unit/address, amount due, due date, paid date, platform fee, and status (pending, paid, late, failed, or refunded).

• Send Reminder — available on any pending or late payment; emails the tenant a nudge to pay.
• Record Manual Payment — for rent collected outside the app (cash, check, money order, Venmo, Zelle, or other). Pick the pending/late payment it applies to, choose the method, and optionally add a note (e.g. a check number). This marks the payment as paid without processing anything through Stripe.

The income and expense ledger

The Ledger tab is a full accounting log for your portfolio. Every online rent payment posts automatically as an income entry — you don't need to enter it yourself. Everything else you log manually with Add Income or Add Expense, each requiring an amount, date, description, and category, with an optional property and notes:

• Income categories: Rent, Security Deposit, Pet Fee, Parking, Late Fee, Advance Rent, Laundry, Storage, Other Income.
• Expense categories: Advertising, Auto & Travel, Cleaning & Maintenance, Commissions, Insurance, Legal & Professional, Management Fees, Mortgage Interest, Other Interest, Repairs, Supplies, Taxes, Utilities, Depreciation, Other Expenses — the same categories the IRS Schedule E form uses, which is what powers the tax reports described below.

Each entry can carry an uploaded receipt or attachment (image or PDF) — handy for audit trails and tax time. Entries you add manually can be edited or deleted at any time; automatic rent-payment entries can't be edited directly from the ledger since they mirror the underlying payment record.

Filtering, searching, and exporting

The ledger toolbar gives you several ways to slice your transaction history:

• Date range pills — This Month, Last Month, YTD, All Time, or a Custom range with your own start/end dates.
• Property filter — narrow to a single property or view all.
• Type filter — All, Income only, or Expense only.
• Search — matches transaction descriptions as you type.
• Export — downloads the currently filtered transactions as a CSV (date, type, category, description, property, amount, notes, receipt link).

A totals bar above the table shows how many transactions match your filters plus the combined income, expenses, and net for that exact view, and results are paginated 50 rows at a time.

Monthly summary cards

At the top of the Payments page, four cards always reflect the current month to date:

• Income (MTD) — total income logged this month.
• Expenses (MTD) — total expenses logged this month.
• Net (MTD) — income minus expenses, flagged as positive or negative cash flow.
• Outstanding Rent — rent that's due or late and hasn't been collected yet.

For a year-over-year view with a month-by-month breakdown, see the cash flow summary on the Reports page — covered in Subscriptions, Credits, Reports, Taxes, and Account Settings, along with Schedule E exports and the AI Tax Summary.