Why the day matters
Arrears cases are won and lost on dates. If your record says the rent was late "sometime in March", you are relying on memory. The ledger records the due date, the amount due and what actually arrived, so the arrears figure has a date attached to every part of it.
Part payments
Record a partial payment on the rent charge. It reduces the balance rather than clearing the charge, and the amount received goes into Finance as rent received. The amount still owed is tracked explicitly, which is the number that matters when arrears are being counted against a threshold.
The contact trail
Reminders and messages are logged against the property and the tenancy, so the sequence of what you did and when is recoverable later without going through your sent items.
Chasing the tenant automatically
Automatic chasing is off until you turn it on. Once it is on, each tenancy with rent overdue gets one email listing every unpaid date and the total, repeated at the interval you choose and up to the number of times you choose, until the rent is marked paid.
Before it goes on you see who the first run would email and about which payments, so you can mark any rent that has already arrived. Rent more than 90 days overdue is not chased automatically: debt that old is yours to look at, and where Ground 8 applies the rent page links to a Section 8 notice.
Tenants on Universal Credit
On a home let in your own account, you can tick that the tenant gets the housing element of Universal Credit. It is recorded on that tenancy only, never on an application or a reference. When the arrears reach two months’ rent or more, the tenancy and the Rent page say you can ask DWP to pay the rent to you, with the tenancy’s details ready to copy for the request.
GOV.UK’s guide to Universal Credit for landlords (updated 10 June 2026, read 1 November 2026) says that with arrears of two months or more you can request a managed payment, where the housing costs are paid to you, or a deduction towards the arrears, through the Apply for a Direct Rent Payment service. Universal Credit decides, and GOV.UK says both you and the tenant are told.
Interest on late rent
For a home let in England, the Tenant Fees Act 2019 allows interest on late rent only if the tenancy agreement requires it and the rent is not paid in full before the end of the 14 days beginning with its due date. It is limited to 3% a year above the Bank of England base rate, on the rent still unpaid, for each day after the due date (Schedule 1, paragraph 4).
While a tenant is behind with rent, the Rent page gives that rule and today’s limit, worked out from the Bank Rate the Bank of England last published. The Rent page is on the trial and paid plans, in your own account and in an agency workspace.
The tenancy agreement builder checks the terms you add, on every plan, in your own account and in an agency workspace. A term charging interest on late rent is given today’s limit too, and a fixed rate in it is said to be over the limit now or within it today.
Today’s figure is left out, and the rule shown alone, whenever the Bank of England figures cannot be shown as today’s, for example when a Bank Rate decision has been announced since they were read.
If it escalates
Ground 8 is a rent arrears ground with its own threshold, and the notice drafter reads the ledger rather than asking you to type a figure in. Get the recording right early and the notice is a formality; get it wrong and no amount of paperwork later fixes it.
When the tenant has left
If a former tenant still owes rent on one of your own properties, the Rent page lists them under Former tenants with a balance, where Letter before claim draws a letter following the Pre-Action Protocol for Debt Claims from the rent ledger.
