Management Firms¶

A property-management firm oversees one or more facilities on the platform. The Management Firms feature ties those facilities to the firm that runs them, tracks the monthly management fee the firm earns from each property, and keeps a running ledger of costs the firm fronts on a property's behalf and the repayments that recover them.

It serves two audiences:

Firm staff — finance and admin users at the firm, who log into a dedicated firm portal to see fees, the float ledger, and statements across every property the firm manages.
Managed-facility billing admins — the on-site team at each managed property, who see the resulting billing accounts and receive a notification on every money event.

Your firm and the properties it manages are set up for you by CautaReside. Once that's done, firm staff manage the day-to-day from the firm portal described below.

What firm staff see (firm portal)¶

A firm user signs in with the facility code of any property the firm manages and their own credentials. The portal is scoped to that firm only — a firm login can't reach the rest of the app for any facility.

Two firm roles:

Firm finance — read access to everything below, plus the ability to record fronted costs and repayments on the float.
Firm admin — all of the above, plus editing each property's fee agreement.

In the portal a firm user sees only the properties their firm manages and can view the firm statement, fees, and float across them.

The fee agreement (per property)¶

Each managed property has one active agreement:

Flat — a fixed amount per month (in GHS).
Percent — a percentage of what's collected at that property each month.

Plus the fee day of month, the currency, and a settlement mode that decides how the fee is actually collected:

Recorded charge — the fee is posted as a normal billing charge against the property and collected through billing. Works on both Paystack and Hubtel. Simplest and fully auditable.
Ledger only — the fee is recorded in the firm ledger and settled out-of-band.
Gateway split — the firm's cut is routed automatically at payment time. Paystack only — Hubtel's payment API carries a single merchant account with no subaccount, so a firm on the Hubtel rail records the cut as a pending fee instead (see Live management-fee split below).

Monthly fee engine¶

A daily job accrues each active agreement's management fee for the closed previous calendar month, once per firm / property / month (re-running is safe — it never double-charges).

Flat agreements accrue the fixed amount.
Percent agreements accrue percent × the month's collections (the sum of successful billing payments at that property for the month).

Each accrual is written to the firm ledger and, depending on the agreement's settlement mode:

Recorded charge — a billing charge is posted to an auto-created Management Fee account on the property, so the fee flows through normal billing.
Ledger only — recorded in the firm ledger for out-of-band settlement.
Gateway split — accrues to the ledger; live at-payment routing is described below.

On every accrual, firm finance + the property's billing admins are notified by email, in-app, and Telegram.

Live management-fee split¶

A percent agreement can collect the firm's cut from each resident payment as it happens, instead of waiting for the monthly accrual. Set the agreement's settlement to Gateway split.

Paystack — set the firm's Paystack subaccount on the firm, then turn on Live split (off by default). Each resident payment routes the firm's percentage to that subaccount automatically; the cut is also recorded on the firm's statement as a settled fee.
Hubtel — Hubtel can't split a payment live (its API settles to a single merchant account), so the firm's cut is recorded as a pending fee on each payment and settled out-of-band (or via the monthly engine). The economic outcome is the same; only the live routing differs.

Leave Live split off until you've confirmed the subaccount split in a Paystack test transaction. While it's off, cuts are still tracked on the statement — no money is routed automatically.

Prepay / recover float¶

When a firm fronts a cost for a property — pays the platform subscription, a vendor invoice, or a levy ahead of billing the client — record it on the firm's Float panel:

Front cost — logs the amount the firm paid for that property (increasing what the client owes the firm). Tick Bill the client to also raise a billing charge on the property's Firm Advances account so it flows through normal billing.
Repayment — logs money the client paid back, reducing the outstanding balance.

Each property shows its outstanding to firm (fronted costs minus repayments), with recent entries listed below. Firm finance + the property's billing admins are notified on every drawdown and repayment.

Automatic subscription drawdown¶

When a firm fronts a managed property's platform subscription, the float can record it automatically. On the agreement, turn on Auto-draw fronted subscription (off by default). After that, every time that facility's subscription renews and is paid, the float records a cost fronted entry against the property — no manual keying.

Recovery stays a deliberate step: the automatic entry records what the firm fronted, but it does not raise a client charge on its own. Use the float's Repayment action (or bill the client) to recover. Only subscription renewals auto-draw; operational costs are still recorded by hand. Works the same on Paystack and Hubtel.

Firm statement¶

Each firm has a Statement view that rolls up its ledger:

Fees accrued per managed property (from the monthly fee engine).
Float drawn / outstanding per property (costs the firm fronted, minus repayments).
Totals across all the firm's properties, plus total repaid to date.

Use Download PDF for a printable statement to share with the firm. Amounts are shown in the firm's reporting currency (GHS).

What managed-facility admins see¶

You don't manage firm settings from the facility side, but the firm's activity surfaces in your billing:

A Management Fee account, auto-created on the property, carries any fee posted as a recorded charge.
A Firm Advances account carries costs the firm fronted and chose to bill back to you.

Both behave like any other billing account — they appear in statements, accept payment, and keep a full audit trail. Your billing admins are notified by email, in-app, and Telegram on every fee accrual, fronted cost, and repayment, so there are no silent charges.