One app for dues, maintenance requests and announcements

Dues collection still runs through a WhatsApp group with photos of transfer receipts, and at month end someone matches every payment against the bank statement line by line. Maintenance requests live in the caretaker's head, and when the audit comes around no one can produce a breakdown of spending. A property management app puts all three flows — collection, requests and announcements — on the record.

How many separate apps does this need?

  • 01

    Resident App (iOS + Android)

    Per-unit dues balance and payment history, payment by card or bank transfer, maintenance requests with photos, announcements, shared-facility booking, door intercom calls, and visitor/parcel notifications.

  • 02

    Staff App (Android)

    Assigned work orders for caretakers and technical staff, before-and-after photos, periodic maintenance checklists for shared areas, visitor and parcel logging, and shift handover notes; works offline in the underground car park where there is no signal.

  • 03

    Management Panel (Web)

    Block/unit records and owner-tenant data, dues accrual and debt breakdowns, income-expense ledger, bank reconciliation, request queue, announcement broadcasts, and report exports for audits and the general assembly.

What the app includes

  • Automatic dues accrual by land share and square meters
  • Water meter reading entry with the difference added to the monthly dues
  • Heat cost allocator data split into per-apartment heating charges
  • Staged payment notices for indebted units and a case file export before legal action
  • Announcements targeted to a block, a floor, or only owners or tenants
  • Read receipts per announcement plus a list of units it never reached
  • General assembly notice, proxy registration and quorum calculation
  • Renewal calendar for lift, generator and fire system maintenance contracts
  • QR codes posted in common areas so faults are reported on the spot
  • Licence plate log for visitor and service vehicles with parking duration tracking
  • Read-only access to the ledger and payment receipts for the audit committee
  • Timesheet and salary advance records for caretaker and cleaning staff

State of the sector

Newly delivered residential developments are now marketed with an app included, so residents get used to seeing their balance on their phone from day one. That habit carries over to older buildings: the question “why are we still writing this in a ledger?” comes up at the general assembly and lands on the management company's desk. For professional management firms the picture is sharper still — a firm that cannot run several buildings from a single panel looks weak in a tender against a competitor that offers a resident portal. In buildings with no app, the most visible loss is trust: when spending is not transparent, collection slows, and when collection slows, shared expenses get deferred and the problem grows.

Metrics that matter here

  • Dues collection rate within the period — Automatic reminders, one-tap card payments and a live balance view push more payments into the same month they are due.
  • Average days overdue — Pre-due-date notifications and a per-unit balance screen stop payments drifting to month end and smooth out cash flow.
  • Time to close a maintenance request — Once a request is logged and assigned to a staff member, verbally passed jobs stop disappearing and closure time becomes measurable.
  • Outstanding balance per unit — Chronically indebted units stand out in the panel, so management can start the formal notice process before it reaches enforcement.

Common mistakes in this sector

  • Assuming dues are a single fixed amount Buildings where dues vary by land share, differ between shops and flats, or charge parking separately are extremely common. A build that assumes one flat amount falls apart at the first accrual run. Set up a line-item tariff table from the start.
  • Leaving accounting outside the app When payments run through the app but the expense ledger lives in a separate spreadsheet, the audit committee cannot reconcile the two sources. Income and expenses belong in the same ledger, with the period report available as a single export.
  • Building only the resident app With no separate interface for caretakers and technical staff, requests pile up on the manager's phone. Without the staff side the request loop never closes: work order assignment and photo-based sign-off must be planned in from the beginning.
  • Treating the WhatsApp group as an official channel There is no way to prove who received a general assembly notice or an important announcement, and it gets lost in the chatter. Announcements should be logged with read receipts, and casual chat kept on a separate channel.

Regulation and compliance

Building management in Turkey falls under Condominium Law No. 634: keeping a decision book, an operating budget and income-expense records, and issuing general assembly notices in the proper form, are all mandatory. The app has to produce the digital equivalent of these records and be able to hand the audit committee a full breakdown. Residents' names, contact details, vehicle plates, visitor logs and camera footage are personal data under KVKK (Turkey's data protection law, aligned with GDPR), which requires a privacy notice, defined retention periods and role-based access separation. Management must record supplier invoices under the e-Fatura/e-Arşiv (Turkey's mandatory e-invoicing system) regime and issue receipts for shared expense collections.

The real challenges in this sector

  • Owner and tenant share a unit but not the same debt

    Under Turkey's Condominium Law, the owner is liable for some expenses and the occupant for others. In the data model we keep the unit as the root and attach owner and tenant as separate dated records, then tag each expense type to either the owner or the occupant. When accruals are generated, the system automatically picks whoever lived there that month. When a tenant moves out their account closes, any carried-over balance stays with the owner, and the new tenant starts at zero.

  • Matching bank transfers to the right unit

    Residents write nothing but “dues” in the payment reference, so there is no way to tell which unit paid. The fix: assign each unit a bank sub-account or unique reference number, then import the bank statement into the panel and match automatically on that reference. Anything unmatched drops into a manual queue; the manager assigns it to a unit in one click and the balance in the resident's app updates immediately.

  • Retroactive dues increases and late-payment interest

    The general assembly raises dues mid-year, effective from the date of the decision. We generate accruals from a date-ranged tariff table rather than a single fixed amount, so earlier months stay untouched. Late-payment interest is calculated day by day up to the payment date, capped at the legal maximum, and shown as a separate line item — so residents can see exactly what they are paying for.

  • Double bookings and abuse of shared facilities

    The meeting room, roof terrace, guest parking and gym have to go to one unit at a time. Booking writes are handled server-side with a slot lock, so two people cannot take the same hour simultaneously. Monthly quotas per unit, blocking bookings for units in arrears, and manager-approval rules are all configurable from the panel; when a slot is cancelled, the next person in the queue is notified.

  • Making sure intercom and parcel alerts actually arrive

    If the notification is late while a visitor waits at the door, the system is useless. Video door calls ring on the lock screen as a call notification rather than an ordinary push, so they come through even when the app is closed. An unanswered call rolls over to a second household member, then to security. Parcel deliveries are logged at the security desk with a photo and a unique code, which the resident scans on collection.

Required integrations

  • Card and recurring dues payments via iyzico, PayTR or Craftgate (Turkish payment providers)
  • Bank virtual POS and sub-account / referenced transfer statement integration
  • Bulk SMS and email provider (announcements, payment reminders, general assembly notices)
  • SIP/RTSP connections to IP door panels, turnstiles and car park barrier systems
  • Expense and receipt export to e-Fatura/e-Arşiv (Turkey's mandatory e-invoicing system) and bookkeeping software
  • Consumption data from remotely read water meters and heat cost allocators

Who this page is for

  • Volunteer manager of a single-block site with 40-80 units

    No door panel or bookings needed. A resident app, dues accrual, card and transfer collection, the ledger and announcements are enough; the Phase 1 scope stands alone and keeps the budget low.

  • Professional management company running several sites

    Many sites in one panel, per-site permissions, consolidated collection reporting and an own-branded resident app to show when bidding for a contract. Bookkeeping export and audit reports are mandatory here, optional for a volunteer manager.

  • Developer or operator of a newly delivered large residential project

    Starting from scratch is an advantage: door panels, barriers, heat allocators and meters can be integrated at handover. Common area bookings, visitor and parcel flow and post-handover warranty defect requests belong in scope from the start.

A phased plan that splits the budget

  1. 1

    Phase 1 — Dues and announcement core 5-7 hafta

    Unit, owner and tenant structure, dues accrual from a tariff table, card and bank transfer collection, the resident balance screen, announcements and the income-expense ledger. This stands on its own: management runs collection from the app and residents see what they owe. Nothing else is worth building before collection is reliable.

  2. 2

    Phase 2 — Request flow and staff app 4-5 hafta

    Photo-based fault reports, work order assignment, closure with before-and-after photos, periodic maintenance checklists, QR reporting on the spot and shift handover notes. Until the staff side exists, requests keep piling up on the manager's phone, so this follows Phase 1 directly.

  3. 3

    Phase 3 — Entry, bookings and integrations 4-6 hafta

    IP door panel and barrier connection, video door calls, visitor and parcel logging, common area bookings, heat allocator and remote meter data import, and expense export to the bookkeeping software. This depends most on hardware and third parties, needs a site survey and field testing, so it comes last.

Typical scope and timeline

Typical scope: a resident app (iOS + Android), a staff app and a web management panel; unit/owner-tenant structure, dues accrual and payment, income-expense ledger, request management, announcements and shared-facility booking. UI/UX design, store assets, ASO, multilingual interface, QA and release on the App Store and Google Play are also included.

Estimated timeline: 10-16 weeks

Off-the-shelf or custom build?

Topic Off-the-shelf Custom build
Dues allocation rules Off-the-shelf packages handle equal-per-unit or per-square-meter splits well and work from day one in a standard site. Separate tariffs for shops, parking, villas and flats, land-share weighting and assembly-decision exemptions become configurable rules.
Connecting to existing bookkeeping and e-invoicing Some packages ship connectors for common bookkeeping tools; if yours is on the list, no extra work is needed. The export is written for the accountant actually in use, the e-Fatura/e-Arsiv integrator (Turkey's e-invoicing system) and the bank's own statement format.
Cost structure: subscription or one-off A per-unit monthly fee starts low for a small site, goes live immediately and needs no upfront investment. There is a one-time build cost, but the bill does not grow with every added unit or newly managed site.
Data ownership and change of management The vendor handles backups and offers an export; a small site never has to think about running its own server. The database and source code belong to the site or the management company, so records and access survive any change of manager voted at the assembly.

Sector glossary

Land share (arsa payi)
The share of the plot recorded on each unit's title deed. Many common expenses are split by this ratio rather than equally, so the accrual model must store a ratio per unit, not a flat amount.
Operating budget plan (isletme projesi)
The annual estimate of income and expenses that sets each unit's monthly dues. In the panel it becomes the template for the next period's accruals once the assembly approves it.
Decision book (karar defteri)
The notarised book where assembly and board decisions are recorded in order. The app keeps a digital counterpart and links each tariff change, accrual or booking rule to the decision behind it.
Carried-over balance
The debt or credit a unit carries from the previous period. It is the critical field during tenant turnover and system migration; carried over wrongly, a new resident sees someone else's debt.
Heat cost allocator (payolcer)
A device that measures each radiator's share of consumption in centrally heated buildings. Readings are pulled monthly and turned into per-unit heating charges, with common-area share and minimum-consumption rules applied separately.

Frequently asked questions

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