Depending on who you bank with, they may report a payment as cleared when they mail the payment or when they anticipate the payment will be received, but not when or if it is actually received. We see this commonly with Bank of America, US Bank and Regions Bank, among others. The date our records reflect your payment was received is 100% accurate. If our records show we haven’t received your payment, we have not.

However, it should also be noted that the bank transmits their payment data to our software overnight for the previous day. Thus, if you check your account with us the same day your bank shows the payment as cleared, it will show your payment hasn’t been received  because the bank and software haven’t synchronized yet. You can check our records the following day, and it should then reflect your payment. Once posted, your payment will be reflected as received on the correct date. While the data transfer is always a day behind, the date the payment was actually received will be recorded accurately.

When you send a check through online bill pay with your bank, this is not a true electronic payment. The bank is mailing a check on your behalf, and those checks are subject to the same delays or losses as anything else sent through USPS. We have inquired about true electronic processing with the bank, and expressed willingness to pay for this service. We are told our company doesn’t do a significant enough volume of payments to qualify. This isn’t only because we are a small management company. According to them, only the largest management companies qualify, none of which operate in St. Louis.

The only way to make true electronic payments is through the Resident Center. There is no fee to process a payment if the payment method is the routing and account number from a bank account. You can log into your account or request one if you don’t have one by clicking here.