Key Tactics to Drastically Improve Your Senior Housing Payments Program
Historically, offering Seniors and their families many types of payment options hasn’t been critical in Senior Housing. However, this segment is evolving and beginning to emulate other housing sectors that have long-adopted payment platforms that enable application fees, rent, and care fees to be paid by numerous payment channels, including online payments. Recently, ClickPay conducted a webcast on how Senior Housing operators can improve their payment processes to streamline workflows and offer convenient payment options for residents. The 5 Ways to Strengthen Your Senior Living Payments Platform webcast and interview with ClickPay’s SVP of Marketing and Business Development, Emily Kramer, was featured in Senior Living Foresight Magazine.
The 5 key tactics highlighted in the article are:
1. Offer an online payments solution to your residents
2. Centralize and consolidate all payment methods
3. Enable functionality designed expressly for the complexities of the Senior Living market
4. Create a paper payments solution that eliminates fraud risk
5. Provide a contact center that offers resident assistance 24/7
The low-hanging fruit for any Senior Housing facility is to deploy an online payment portal. Enabling Seniors and their families to conveniently pay by ACH or credit/debit card is becoming an expectation more than an amenity. Further, providing a way to collect an application deposit will lock in prospective residents and fill vacancies quicker.
Centralizing all payment methods is another key tactic to create operational efficiency. According to Susan Saldibar, from Senior Living Foresight Magazine, “When everything is centralized, it makes it easier for everyone. The ClickPay platform provides the functionality to collect 100% of all payments, whether they are credit cards, checks, or paid from a banking portal.”
ClickPay’s payment platform is designed to effectively address Senior Housing payments challenges. Families often share financial responsibility for Senior Housing living expenses, so they now demand functionality to support their evolving needs. They actively seek out Senior Housing facilities that grant multiple family members access to an online payment portal for balance visibility and the ability to make individual payments to rent and care fees. “Family members want to see each line item and pay the exact amount by line item. But on the back end this means that payments are coming through at different times. And the funding flows are different (e.g., 3 days for credit card, 5 days for check, etc.). Our solution aggregates all channels, creating one seamless workflow in one dashboard to see all line items and payments,” Kramer told Senior Living Foresight Magazine.
While paperless payments continue to be the preferred payment method for younger generations, paper payments are likely not going anywhere. Therefore, creating a paper payment solution that eliminates the risk of fraud associated with manual check processing is imperative. ClickPay’s electronic check scanning software enables checks to be scanned to the bank while updating the resident ledger automatically, so there is no double entry or risk of human error. Another option is to, “outsource your entire A/R functionality to ClickPay. Families can send checks to their lockboxes where machines open, scan, and enter them into the system. No human interaction needed,” Saldibar says.
Providing Seniors and their families a premium contact center to support renters with all payment related questions is another key method to improve the success of your payment system. ClickPay offers a 24/7 white-glove, bilingual, U.S.-based resident call center to all their customers. ClickPay’s Contact Center representatives can register new residents, set up new payment methods, and answer any questions. Instead of staff fielding questions, ClickPay’s Call Center enables site staff to focus on other important operational tasks.
About ClickPay
The complete platform for real estate billing and payments.
As the industry-leading platform for automating real estate receivables, ClickPay accepts all payment methods, including paper checks, e-checks (ACH), cash, and credit & debit cards. ClickPay delivers integrated print and e-bill presentment and payment services to increase operational efficiencies and enable profitable growth. Shaping the future of real estate billing and payments with innovative products and services, ClickPay provides property management companies with customizable solutions to connect with their tenants, residents, and homeowners. To learn more, go to https://www.clickpay.com.