Hidden Fee Finder for Property Management Companies
Rent, deposits, and application fees are large, mostly online payments that cluster around the first of the month. That pattern makes some statement fees easy to miss. Tick the fees on last month's statement to see what card acceptance really costs your property management company and which charges to question.
Your statement check
Estimates are based on published industry averages and are not a quote. Actual rates depend on card mix, ticket size, industry, and underwriting.
The fees you ticked
Estimates are based on published industry averages and are not a quote. Actual rates depend on card mix, ticket size, industry, and underwriting.
About your pricing model
Bring this statement. A payments specialist can walk through it line by line with you. Estimates are based on published industry averages and are not a quote. Actual rates depend on card mix, ticket size, industry, and underwriting.
How this works: the assumptions behind your numbers
Every number above comes from the totals you enter plus the assumptions below. Assumptions are estimates, not verified rates.
- Industry average effective rate by segment: retail 2.55%, restaurant 2.75%, ecommerce 3.15%, services 2.90%, healthcare 2.65%, b2b 2.80%, high_risk 4.25%. Source: TouchSuite pricing assumptions file (estimates only; replace with verified figures before launch).
- Comparison tolerance band: ±0.25 percentage points counts as 'close to average'. Source: Tool design assumption to avoid flagging trivial differences.
- Last month is representative: Monthly fee amounts are multiplied by 12 to annualize. Source: Tool design assumption; seasonal businesses should treat annual figures as rough.
- Annual fee frequency: Annual fee entered as a once-a-year amount, multiplied by 1. Source: Tool design assumption.
- Early termination fee: Treated as a one-time cost, not annualized. Source: Tool design assumption.
- Fee classification tags: Interchange and card brand fees tagged 'typically pass-through'; listed account-level fees tagged 'typically processor-set'. Source: General industry structure; actual billing varies by processor and contract, so tags read 'typically'.
- Sanity check bounds: Warn if effective rate is above 15% or below 0.5%. Source: Tool design assumption to catch data-entry mistakes.
Estimates are based on published industry averages and are not a quote. Actual rates depend on card mix, ticket size, industry, and underwriting.
Why property management companies read statements differently
A property management company's card activity looks very different from a store's. Tickets are large: a month's rent, a security deposit, or an HOA assessment. Transaction counts are low relative to volume. Nearly all payments are card-not-present, made through a tenant portal, an emailed payment link, or a virtual terminal. Card-not-present and rewards card transactions usually carry higher interchange than swiped or tapped debit, so your baseline cost sits higher than a retailer's even before any processor markup.
Volume is lumpy. Most rent arrives in the first few days of the month, late payments trickle in after that, and move-in and move-out activity often rises during peak leasing months. Use one complete calendar month, and take volume and fees from the same statement. If you tend to compare summer leasing months with quieter winter months, run the tool once for each.
Many tenants pay by ACH or eCheck rather than card. Enter only card volume and card fees here. If your statement combines ACH charges with card charges, pull out the ACH lines first. Otherwise your effective rate will be distorted.
Worked example: a hypothetical property management company
Hypothetical numbers for illustration only: a property management company processes $120,000 in card payments in a month across 80 transactions, mostly rent, and pays $4,200 in total fees. It chooses Professional services as its business type.
The free results would show an effective rate of 3.50% ($4,200 ÷ $120,000), a cost per transaction of $52.50, and an average ticket of $1,500. Against the Professional services industry average assumption of 2.90%, that is 0.60 percentage points above, so the status reads 'Above the industry average.' In the gated report, the annual cost above the industry average works out to $8,640 (0.60 points × $120,000 × 12), and annual total fees come to $50,400.
Now suppose the company also enters $3,000 in interchange and $240 in card brand fees. The report then splits out an estimated monthly markup of $960. That is 0.80% of volume and roughly 22.86% of total fees, which gives the owner a specific number to put to their processor.
Estimates are based on published industry averages and are not a quote. Actual rates depend on card mix, ticket size, industry, and underwriting.
Fees property management companies should look at closely
Gateway and portal fees: if tenants pay through property management software, you may pay a per-transaction gateway fee on top of processing. Check whether you are being billed twice for the same transaction, once by the gateway and once by the processor.
Batch fees: a portfolio that settles daily during the rent rush can generate a string of batch charges. Each is small, but they add up across a year. Monthly minimums can hit the other way. A smaller portfolio, or one where most tenants use ACH, may not reach the card volume minimum and gets charged the difference.
Chargeback and retrieval fees: disputes over withheld security deposits or contested rent can bring per-case fees on top of the disputed amount. Non-qualified or mid-qualified surcharges on tiered statements often land on keyed-in rewards cards, which are routine for a property management company taking payment over the phone.
Equipment leases: a leased countertop terminal in the leasing office that gets little use, plus PCI non-compliance fees for a questionnaire nobody filed, are common line items to question.
What a good result looks like for a property management company
Do not let cost per transaction alarm you. With rent-sized tickets, a high dollar figure per payment is normal. For a property management company, the effective rate is the number to judge, and the rate gap compared with the Professional services assumption of 2.90% shows whether that rate is in a reasonable range.
A healthy result is an effective rate close to or below that assumption, few or no fees tagged 'Typically processor-set,' and, if you can enter your interchange and card brand totals, a markup share you can match against your contract. If your statement is tiered, expect the tool to flag it. When the processor sorts rent payments into buckets, you cannot see what you are actually paying in markup.
Estimates are based on published industry averages and are not a quote. Actual rates depend on card mix, ticket size, industry, and underwriting.
Frequently asked questions
Which business type should a property management company choose?
Choose Professional services. That is the segment the tool uses for property management, and its industry average assumption is the one most comparable to rent and deposit payments taken mostly online. Whichever segment you pick, its average is an assumption, not a benchmark guarantee.
Most of our tenants pay rent by ACH. Should that volume go in the tool?
No. Enter card volume and card fees only. If ACH or eCheck fees are mixed into the same statement, leave them out of total fees. Including ACH on either side will make your card effective rate look lower or higher than it really is.
We pass a convenience fee to tenants who pay by card. How should we enter our numbers?
Enter the card volume and the total fees your processor charged you, exactly as they appear on the statement. If convenience fees you collected are included in volume, that will affect the rate, so note it when you compare results. Rules on convenience fees and surcharges vary, so confirm your practice with the card brands and your state.
Rent comes in on the first and our statement spikes. Which month should we use?
Use any complete month in which volume and fees come from the same statement. The spike is fine, since the tool works from monthly totals. Avoid a month with unusual one-off events, such as a large batch of deposit refunds, unless you want to see that month's effect. If the leasing season shifts your mix, run the tool for a busy month and a quiet month.
Will tenant disputes over security deposits show up in this tool?
If you tick the chargeback or retrieval fee and enter last month's amount, the gated report annualizes it and gives you questions to ask about per-case fees. The tool does not track the disputed amounts themselves. It covers only the fees charged to handle them.