Rental arrears collection software
that recovers late rent without the chasing.
Recover late rent faster with structured escalation, automated reminders over email and SMS with one-tap WhatsApp send, and an arrears dashboard that finally tells you what is overdue, by how much, and for how long.
- Bank-feed reconciliation
- Multi-channel reminders
- POPIA aligned
- Tribunal-grade evidence
Every reminder and partial payment is captured automatically against the lease.
Incoming EFT payments matched to the lease and invoice from bank payment notifications and CSV bank-statement imports.
Automated email and SMS reminders, with one-tap WhatsApp send from the arrears workspace.
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 last EFT was reconciled, 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, payment reconciliation is tracked individually against the bank record, and the evidence pack you would need at the Tribunal is generated from the same record your team works on every day.
Read the full guide
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.
- An EFT lands unreferenced and nobody matches it in time, so a paid invoice still shows as arrears.
- 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 and SMS — with one-tap WhatsApp send — and a complete log on the lease record.
- Incoming EFT payments reconcile automatically from bank payment notifications and CSV bank-statement imports, and unmatched receipts surface as exceptions for review.
- 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 and SMS on the schedule you set, with one-tap WhatsApp send from the arrears workspace for a personal follow-up. Each send is logged against the lease with timestamp, channel, status and delivery receipt where available.
- Automated email + SMS cadence
- One-tap WhatsApp send, logged on the lease
- Customisable per-org reminder schedule
Bank-feed reconciliation runs automatically
Incoming EFT payments are imported from bank payment notifications and CSV bank-statement imports and matched to the right lease and open invoice, with direct read-only bank feeds rolling out per bank. The platform records each receipt and updates the lease ledger when the bank confirms. Receipts auto-allocate.
- Bank-notification + CSV statement import
- Reference matching + operator override
- Receipts auto-allocated to the right invoice
Escalate with full evidence
If reminders fail to recover the arrears, the team escalates with the full pack: statement of account, reminder log, payment 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.
Bank-statement reconciliation
Incoming EFT payments are captured from bank payment notifications and CSV bank-statement imports (FNB, Standard Bank, Nedbank, ABSA, Capitec) and matched to the right tenant and invoice, with direct read-only bank feeds rolling out per bank. Regalis reconciles the money that lands rather than pulling it.
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
Templated email and SMS reminders with a cadence you configure per organisation, per lease, or per arrears tier — plus one-tap WhatsApp send from the arrears workspace.
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, payment history, 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 automated reminder cadence runs over email and SMS, and one-tap WhatsApp sends respect the tenant's opt-in flags, so a tenant only gets service messages on the channels they consented 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
Common 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 and SMS, with one-tap WhatsApp send from the arrears workspace. Incoming EFT payments reconcile automatically against bank payment notifications and CSV bank-statement imports. The arrears dashboard shows every overdue invoice ranked by days late and outstanding balance.
How is rent received and reconciled?+
Rent is received by EFT. Incoming bank payment notifications and CSV bank-statement imports (FNB, Standard Bank, Nedbank, ABSA, Capitec) are auto-matched to the lease and open invoice, with direct read-only bank feeds rolling out per bank. Regalis reconciles the money that lands rather than pulling it via a debit-order rail.
What evidence does Regalis produce for the Rental Housing Tribunal?+
Every reminder, 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?+
WhatsApp reminders are one-tap sends: the arrears workspace pre-fills the reminder message and opens WhatsApp so your team sends it in one tap, and the contact is logged on the lease. The automated reminder cadence runs over email and SMS, so tenants who are not reached on WhatsApp are still reminded on schedule.
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. Bank-notification ingest and CSV bank-statement import are set up during onboarding so incoming receipts reconcile from day one.
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Stop chasing arrears.
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A 20-minute walkthrough is enough to show you how the arrears workflow runs end-to-end.