Rentor reminds your tenants about rent so you don't have to remember. Reminders & Alerts (under Communication) is where you decide when those reminders go out, how they arrive, and what they say — and where you check afterwards what was delivered.

What happens if you never open it

You're not running on nothing. Until you save a schedule of your own, the page tells you so — "You haven't set this up yet" — and your tenants get Rentor's default: a nudge three days before rent is due, one on the day, then at 3, 7, 14 and 30 days late. Reminders show in the tenant's app with a push notification, and go by email. No texts are sent until you choose days to text on.

A bill that covers several months — a hostel term, say — gets an earlier default: reminders start 30 days before it's due, because nobody finds a semester's rent in three days. Once you save your own schedule, Rentor uses yours and adds nothing to it. See Term & semester billing.

Nothing goes out until a property is verified

This is the one rule to know first. Rentor will not speak to tenants in your name — by email, by text, or even by notification in the app — until at least one of your properties has passed ownership review. A banner at the top of the page says so, and whether the next move is yours (send the ownership document) or Rentor's (it's with the reviewers).

You can still build and save your schedule while you wait; the main switch unlocks once a property is verified. Your tenants are never left blind in the meantime — what they owe is always on their own rent and payments screens. See Getting verified.

The Schedule tab

• Automatic rent reminders — the master switch. Turn it off and no scheduled reminder goes out. Bills you post by hand still notify the tenant, because that's a consequence of something you just did, not an automation.
• Before rent is due — tick the days you want: 14, 7, 5, 3, 2 or 1 day before, and On the day.
• When rent is late — 1, 3, 5, 7, 14, 21, 30 or 60 days late. A few fixed points work better than a daily chase, which gets filtered as spam within a week.

Each of the two has its own switch, so you can remind before the due date and stay quiet afterwards, or the other way round.

How they hear from you

Every reminder shows in the app and sends a push notification. On top of that:

• Email — free, and the only channel that carries the full breakdown: the amount, each month owed, and a Pay rent button.
• SMS — texts use your own SMS credits, and the page shows the cost per reminder and your balance before you switch anything on. Choose one of:
• Don't text anyone — tenants hear from you in the app and by email.
• Only tenants with no email address — texts just the tenants you recorded by phone number. Anyone you can email costs you nothing. This is the setting you start on.
• Text everyone, on the days I pick — a text is read far more often than an email; it also costs a credit every time.

Then, under each reminder day, use Also text on: to pick which days send a text as well. No days picked means no texts, whatever the setting above. With Text everyone on, the page works out the worst case for you — how many texts per tenant in a month where rent goes unpaid all the way through, and roughly how many tenants your current credits would cover.

• Quiet hours — no texts between the two times you set (East Africa Time). A reminder caught by quiet hours goes out at the next run, not never. Set the same start and end time for no quiet hours.

Press Save when you're done. Need credits? See Reaching tenants by SMS & email.

The Messages tab — your own words

Under What you say you write the opening line of each reminder — a Text message and an Email opening, for before rent is due and for when it's late. Rentor adds the amount, the months owed, the due date and the pay button underneath automatically, so a reminder can never go out without the figure in it.

Type one of the placeholders shown on the page — the tenant's name, the amount, the unit and so on — and Rentor fills it in for each tenant. The Preview shows exactly how it will read, and for texts it counts the credits one message will cost per tenant. Use Rentor's wording puts the original back. Press Save messages.

The Activity tab — what actually happened

Every reminder is listed with its outcome, and the totals at the top count what was Delivered, what Couldn't be delivered, and the SMS credits spent. Filter by outcome to find the problems:

• No way to reach them — no email, phone or app on file for that channel.
• Out of SMS credits — top up and the next reminder goes.
• Held back (property not verified) — see above.
• Turned off by them — the tenant switched that kind of email off in their own preferences.

If someone tells Rentor a text reached the wrong person, texts to that number stop until the number is corrected — every further one would only go to a stranger who has already said so.

For agencies and hosts

Reminders follow the person who is owed the rent. An agency sees a "Whose tenants?" picker, because each landlord you manage has their own schedule; messages go out in that landlord's name, and any SMS is charged to the credits of whoever switched it on. A host with subtenants has the same page for their sublets.

On the phone app: More → People & Messages → Reminders & Alerts has the same three tabs — Schedule, Messages and Activity — with the same switches.