Rental arrears collection software
that recovers late rent without the chasing.
Recover late rent faster with structured escalation, DebiCheck retries, automated reminders over email, SMS and WhatsApp, and an arrears dashboard that finally tells you what is overdue, by how much, and for how long.
- DebiCheck-ready
- Stitch Payments
- POPIA aligned
- Tribunal-grade evidence
Every reminder, retry and partial payment is captured automatically against the lease.
Authenticated debit-order mandates through Stitch, with the standard SA retry pattern.
Email, SMS and WhatsApp Cloud API — fall back automatically if a channel fails.
Late rent is the line item that compounds the fastest.
In South African residential rentals, arrears are not just an income problem — they are an evidence problem. A tenant who stops paying still has to be served notice, has to receive a Letter of Demand in writing, and may eventually be the subject of a Rental Housing Tribunal hearing or an attorney-led recovery. The longer the file is messy, the harder that conversation becomes.
Most landlords and managing agents still chase arrears in WhatsApp threads, spreadsheet ageing reports, and verbal reminders. By the time a tenant gets to 60 days late, no one is quite sure when the last reminder went out, whether the DebiCheck retry was authorised, or which receipts have been allocated against which invoices.
Regalis was built to make rental arrears collection deterministic. The arrears workflow runs on every active lease, the reminder log is auditable, DebiCheck retries are tracked individually, and the evidence pack you would need at the Tribunal is generated from the same record your team works on every day.
The way most teams collect today
- Arrears live in a manual spreadsheet that is only refreshed monthly — by then a tenant is already 30+ days late and the demand letter has not gone out.
- WhatsApp reminders go out from a personal phone with no log; the tenant claims they were never contacted and the team cannot prove otherwise.
- DebiCheck failures are emailed to a finance inbox and nobody re-submits in time, so a recoverable mandate becomes a manual EFT chase.
- Late fees are charged inconsistently because no policy is enforced — some leases get them, others do not.
- When the file finally goes to an attorney for a Letter of Demand there is no single statement of account; the team rebuilds it from emails, screenshots and bank statements.
The way Regalis runs it
- Arrears dashboard updates the moment an invoice goes past due — every overdue lease is visible, sorted by aging and exposure.
- Reminders fire from templated workflows over email, SMS and WhatsApp, with a complete log on the lease record.
- DebiCheck failures auto-retry on the standard SA pattern and surface as exceptions only if all retries fail.
- Late-fee policy is configured per lease and added as a late-fee line on the next invoice — no manual entry.
- Statement of account, reminder log, and tribunal evidence export are one click each from the lease record.
From day one overdue to the evidence pack.
Invoice goes past due
The moment an invoice passes its due date the lease is flagged as overdue. It appears on the arrears dashboard with its aging bucket, outstanding balance and last activity, and the property manager and finance team are notified automatically.
- Aging buckets: 0-30, 31-60, 61-90, 90+
- Per-tenant arrears total visible on the dashboard
- The same overdue status is reflected in the landlord portal
Templated reminders fire
A configurable reminder cadence sends the first, second and third reminders over email, SMS and WhatsApp on the schedule you set. Each send is logged against the lease with timestamp, channel, status and delivery receipt where available.
- WhatsApp Cloud API approved templates
- Fallback to SMS when WhatsApp opt-in is missing
- Customisable per-org reminder schedule
DebiCheck retries automatically
For leases on DebiCheck, failed collections retry on the standard SA pattern. The platform picks up active mandates, attempts collection, records the outcome, and updates the lease ledger when the bank confirms. Receipts auto-allocate.
- DebiCheck mandate management
- Standard retry pattern + operator override
- Receipts auto-allocated to the right invoice
Escalate with full evidence
If reminders and retries fail to recover the arrears, the team escalates with the full pack: statement of account, reminder log, DebiCheck attempt history, and any internal notes. The export is built from the same record the team has been operating on the whole time, structured to support escalation to an attorney or the Rental Housing Tribunal.
- Statement PDF download per lease
- Draft Letter of Demand with full arrears history
- Reminder log + delivery receipts
- Structured to support attorney and Rental Housing Tribunal escalation
A complete arrears toolkit for SA rentals.
Arrears dashboard
Live view of every overdue invoice across the portfolio, sortable by aging, landlord, property, and tenant. Drill into any row to see the lease, ledger and reminder history.
DebiCheck integration
Authenticated debit-order mandates via Stitch DebiCheck. Capture mandates during onboarding, monitor active mandates, retry failures, revoke when leases terminate.
EFT receipt matching
Bank payment notifications via inbound webhooks or CloudMailin email parsing auto-match to the right tenant and invoice, with a tolerance-band fuzzy match for partial payments.
Reminder templates
WhatsApp Cloud API approved templates plus SMS and email reminders. Configure cadence per organisation, per lease, or per arrears tier.
Late-fee policy
Per-lease late-fee rules — fixed amount or percentage of balance — added to the next invoice after a configurable grace period.
Statement of account
On-demand statement of account export per tenant, per lease, or for the landlord trust account, formatted for accounting handover or tribunal evidence.
Reminder log
A complete record of every reminder sent, including channel, template, recipient address, send status and delivery confirmation — a structured audit trail to help you prepare for a tribunal hearing.
Letter of Demand pack
One-click package — draft Letter of Demand, statement of account, reminder log, DebiCheck retry log, lease document, ID document — that you can serve directly or hand to your attorney with no rebuilding required.
Attorney handover bundle
When recovery escalates to your attorney, the full evidence pack is generated from the same record the team has been operating on — no spreadsheet rebuild, no screenshot collation.
POPIA-aligned outreach
Every tenant has a consent record covering WhatsApp, SMS and email. Marketing-style outreach is filtered automatically, and the workflow is designed to support POPIA-aligned consent and direct-marketing handling for service messages.
POPIA, the Rental Housing Act, and the Consumer Protection Act all touch this workflow.
Rental arrears collection sits on top of three overlapping regulatory regimes. POPIA limits how aggressively and through which channels you can contact a tenant; the Rental Housing Act requires that breach notices and demand correspondence be given in writing; the Consumer Protection Act and National Credit Act inform what counts as fair collection practice.
Regalis is designed to support the basics. The reminder cadence respects opt-in flags so a tenant who has not opted into marketing-style WhatsApp will only get service messages on the channels they did consent to. Notice templates are configurable to help you meet the Rental Housing Act's written-notice requirements. The internal audit log is retained for the POPIA retention window you configure.
For anything that becomes a formal dispute, your attorney can request the export pack — Letter of Demand, statement of account, reminder log and all — and walk into the Rental Housing Tribunal with a structured, well-organised evidence file. That is what the platform is designed to support — not just "tenants got reminded" but a clear record of what was said, when, and on what authority.
Continue exploring how Regalis handles the rest of the rental operation.
Trust accounting
Deposit-only trust ledger and per-landlord trust accounts, designed to support South African property-practitioner trust-money separation.
Read moreTenant screening with TPN
Catch arrears risk before the lease starts — TPN credit reports, affordability and lifestyle compatibility flags.
Read moreLease management
Drafts, renewals, terminations, signatures and review requests — one connected lifecycle.
Read moreCommon questions about rental arrears collection.
How does Regalis automate rental arrears collection?+
Regalis runs a structured arrears workflow on every active lease. When an invoice goes past its due date the lease enters arrears state, and the platform fires escalating reminders over email, SMS and WhatsApp. Failed DebiCheck collections are retried automatically on the configurable schedule. The arrears dashboard shows every overdue invoice ranked by days late and outstanding balance.
Can I collect rent via DebiCheck?+
Yes. Through the Stitch DebiCheck integration, tenants sign an authenticated mandate during onboarding (or on demand for an existing tenant). Monthly collections run automatically, with retries on the standard SA schedule. Bank notifications feed into the receipt ledger and auto-match to the lease.
What evidence does Regalis produce for the Rental Housing Tribunal?+
Every reminder, retry attempt, DebiCheck failure, partial payment, and internal note is captured as part of the lease history. You can export a statement of account, a reminder log, and the full notification trail in PDF — together with a draft Letter of Demand — for use as evidence at the Rental Housing Tribunal or to hand to your attorney.
Does the arrears dashboard work across multiple landlords?+
Yes. Managing agents see arrears across every landlord they manage, filterable by landlord, property, suburb or aging bucket. A landlord using the landlord portal sees only their own arrears, with statements that line up to the trust ledger.
Will tenants get reminded over WhatsApp?+
Yes — Regalis integrates with the WhatsApp Cloud API. Approved Meta templates handle the initial reminder; once a tenant replies, the 24-hour conversation window opens and follow-ups go through free-form messages. Tenants who have not opted into WhatsApp are reminded via SMS and email instead.
Can we charge late fees automatically?+
Yes. Configure a late-fee policy per lease — fixed amount or percentage of the overdue balance, after a configurable grace period — and the charge lands on the next invoice automatically.
How quickly can we go live with the arrears workflow?+
If your leases and bank receipts are in Regalis, the arrears workflow is on by default. For new customers we typically migrate leases plus the last 90 days of receipts so the dashboard is meaningful from day one. DebiCheck mandate roll-out usually runs in parallel as tenants pass their next billing cycle.
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A 20-minute walkthrough is enough to show you how the arrears workflow runs end-to-end.