Faced with a rental income collection rate of 96 per cent, Rotherham Council is now using Mobysoft’s RentSense software to prioritise its arrears case.
Paul Elliot, business and commercial manager, Rotherham Council, said, “Before choosing RentSense, we completed a thorough review of our income collection processes. We benchmarked our performance against 72 other organisations and found we were in the lower quartile.”
Nicholas Beasley, the council’s income recovery team leader, said, “I hadn’t used RentSense before, but straight away I could see the value. When you start to use RentSense, the information and detail it gives you is invaluable, and the reporting identifies where to allocate your time and resources whereas before there was a lack of prioritisation.”
The council is also working towards switching tenants away from direct debits to recurring card payments. Beasley said, “When a direct debit bounces, it can cost the tenant around a week’s rent in additional charges, whereas if a card payment is declined there’s no charge. Furthermore, RentSense flags any declined payments immediately so we can speak to the tenant to help them avoid any potential budget issues or disruption to their tenancy.”
Elliot said, “We originally expected to recoup our investment in RentSense within three years but our investment has already been paid back twice during the first twelve months and we are now upper quartile performers when compared with our peers.
“Our target collection rate for 2018/19 was 98.3 per cent but we actually achieved 99.7 per cent, meaning that we collected over £1.1 million more in rent than budgeted and also reduced our bad debt provision by around £500,000.”
