LearnThe lifecycle
Rent and SEPA autopay
Rent should be the part of renting you never think about. Once a lease is signed, Haven collects rent by SEPA direct debit from the renter and pays the owner on a predictable schedule, with every cent recorded as a journal entry you can trace.
Set up autopay once, at signing
When the lease is signed, the renter authorizes a SEPA direct debit mandate, a one-time consent that lets Haven collect rent from their bank account each month. This is the same mechanism your utility and phone bills use across Europe. It takes a minute, needs an IBAN, and does not require sharing card details or a password with anyone.
The mandate is stored against the tenancy, with its reference and the date it was signed. The renter can see it in their app at any time, and can withdraw it through their bank as SEPA rules allow. Nothing is collected until the mandate exists and the lease is active.
Setup happens once. After that, rent runs on its own. There is no monthly login, no manual transfer, no standing order to remember to update when the rent changes at renewal.
How and when rent is collected
Rent is due on the day the lease specifies. Because SEPA direct debit requires advance notice to the payer's bank, Haven initiates each collection a few days ahead of the due date so the funds settle on time. The renter sees the upcoming charge in their app before it happens, the amount, the date, and which month it covers.
The deposit is handled separately and held in escrow, not mixed with rent. Rent collected flows to the owner; the deposit stays ring-fenced until move-out, when it is returned or applied against agreed deductions. The two never touch the same balance.
Each collection is booked as a double-entry journal entry the moment it is initiated. There are no balance fields quietly overwritten in the background, a balance is always the sum of the entries behind it, which is why the numbers reconcile and the history never rewrites itself.
When and how owners get paid
Once a rent collection settles, Haven pays it out to the owner's bank account. Payouts are predictable: the owner knows which tenancy each one belongs to, what period it covers, and when to expect it. The Owner app shows what has been collected, what is in transit, and what has landed.
Haven's economics are simple and stated plainly. Renters pay nothing. Owners keep roughly 99% of rent collected, Haven takes about 1% of rent plus a small one-time fee when a tenant is placed. That fee is shown before it applies, itemized on the payout, never a surprise deduction.
Because every movement is a journal entry, a payout is not a mystery number. The owner can trace it back to the specific rent collection it came from and the fee that was withheld, down to the cent.
Late, failed, or changed payments, handled clearly
SEPA collections can be returned, insufficient funds, a closed account, a renter dispute. When that happens, Haven records the return against the tenancy and tells both sides in plain language what occurred and what comes next. Nothing is hidden and no number is fabricated to paper over a gap; a missed collection reads as missed.
Deterministic rules decide what happens after a failure, a retry window, a notice, a status change on the tenancy. Those rules are consistent and legible, not a case-by-case judgment call, so a renter and an owner looking at the same event see the same facts.
When rent changes, at renewal, or by an agreed adjustment, the new amount is tied to the lease that authorizes it. The renter sees the change before the next collection reflects it. The mandate carries over; there is nothing to re-enter.
Every payment recorded and receipted
Payment records are legal artifacts, so they are append-only. Once written, a rent collection, a payout, or a fee is never edited in place. A correction is a new entry that references the original, the trail shows what happened and what was done about it, in order, permanently.
Both renter and owner get a receipt for every collection and every payout, available in the app and reflected on invoices. A renter can prove rent was paid; an owner can reconcile a year of income without stitching together bank statements and spreadsheets.
This is the quiet promise underneath autopay: rent moves on time, the money is accounted for as double-entry down to the cent, and the record is one you can stand behind, to a tenant, to an accountant, or to a court.