 Hello everyone and welcome to the RTA's webinar on the new web services bulk on launchment. That's a little bit more. So my name is Lynne Smith. I'm with the communication and education team. I've been with the RTA for over 16 years in two main areas of our education area and also in our dispute resolution area. Today I'm also joined by Caster 7 who has been heavily involved with the project web services and the bulk on launchments. So thanks Kath for helping out today as our subject expert and for our audience today what's your role and how long have you been with the RTA? Thanks Lynne and good morning everyone. Happy to be here with you all. I've been at the RTA now for 12 years. I've worked in majority of the areas across the RTA and most recently just been focusing on the web services project so I've been working on that and now currently back in my bond management team leader role. Great and we also have Lynne from our outreach team helping us today and providing us with some support in the background just in case of any technical issues and also helping out for our questions as well. So before I do start I'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners on the land on which we are holding today's webinar and where you are also joining us from and pay my respects to elders past present and emerging. So with today's presentation we're going to cover off on bond legislation requirements, the RTA's web services and how the bulk on launchments will work. So we're going to be playing you a short demonstration video during the session and we'll be also looking at the benefits for you as a managing agent and also where you can find some more resources to help you. I'll also talk about an update with the Office of Fair Trading and the RTA investigations so if you are a licensed agent or property manager this will actually have an impact on you and at the end we'll address your questions and please note we cannot provide you with legal advice and as always you're encouraged to seek your own independent advice to make informed decisions. Today we also want to hear from you so our webinar will start with a poll very shortly just to see where you're joining us from today and also to see how often you do use the RTA's web services. So we will have a question session before the webinar is finished and we'd love to receive your questions so please use that little chat function or that little speech bubble on your Zoom toolbar rather than the Q&A box. So if you look at the screen you'll see that little image of that speech bubble. We also want to hear from you on how today went and importantly what future topics you'd like to know more about and also any feedback on the RTA's web services so please look out for the survey at the end of the webinar it takes about one one-and-a-half minutes at the most to complete. So we'll get started and I'll just launch our poll. So this one is a two-part poll. So what we're looking for is webouts you're joining us today and also how often you actually use our web services. So if I could get you to just complete that poll for me that would be great. So your web services that's what's covering you know all the processes about lodgements, refunds, you change your contributors, you dispute resolution process and also updating your details and that web services you can use 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And also too I know that we do have a lot of property managers joining us today but we also have some student providers and other managing organizations as well so welcome today. So that poll open for just a moment longer. So it looks like we have about three percent of us are in southeast Queensland followed by Brisbane and but a big hello to our central Queensland and western Queensland people as well. And in relation to our web services it looks like about half of you are actually using it several times a week which is really really great and for the people who don't use web services hopefully we can actually give you more information today on where you can find some resources to be able to jump on board. I'll just end that poll thanks everybody. Okay so let's kick on. Our first topic is about the legislation requirements and for a lot of you this isn't new. So this hasn't been changed it's been in place since the residential tenancies act of 94 days. So the legislation will outline the maximum amount of bond that can be charged but it also says that the bond needs to be lodged for the RTA. So section 116 is very clear that it needs to be lodged with the RTA within 10 days and that is calendar days not business days. So for real estate agencies and managers please check your practices on when you lodge your bonds. We have been saying this for some time now so if you are doing mid and end of month disbursements only then that may not be meeting that 10 day requirement. Best practice would be to choose one day each week disperse weekly to the RTA to make sure that you do make that legislation timeframe and we do know the trust account systems out there do allow for more regular disbursements. You may already be aware of the RTA's web services for all the bond related transactions and updating your details and your dispute resolution but what we are going to go through today is what has also been added to this and that is the ability to lodge many bonds or your bond increases in one transaction. So remember you do have to accept the terms and additions and you will need to log in with your unique QGov identity. So this new process is really aimed for those managing parties such as your real estate agents, your property managers, on-site managers and also your student accommodation providers or your park managers. And two any joint landlords who may own or manage a lot of properties and a lodging bond. So these are the people who are regularly lodging numerous bonds in one go. So for this process you're going to need your RTA ID number and for those who do lodge bulk bonds you do we do know that you will have one. And as I said before this process is lodging new rental bonds or doing the bond increases. So there is a maximum of 50 transactions that you can do and the maximum total of that transaction cannot exceed $50,000. So if you look at the right hand side of your slide you will actually be able to see the process. It gives you step by step along the way and at the end you'll be able to print or save a summary of each of the individual lodgements and also your summary page that you have submitted. So just to give you an example an individual summary is on your left hand side of the screen and your bulk summary is on the right hand side. So we are going to be playing a short demonstration video shortly and we'll show you how it works. And if you're already familiar with our single bond lodgements you'll find that this is very similar process. So Kath I'm just going to come back over to you. Just share some information with the audience just before we play that video. So over to you. Excellent. So with the bulk bond lodgment web service you will be able to have the ability to stop and start. So you will be able to say start your web service bulk lodgment on a Monday and then add five say on that day and then you can come back on Wednesday and add another three before you actually lodge. So you can actually build it up over the over the period of the week. Once you actually submit the bulk bond lodgment to the RTA you will then be taken to a payment page where you'll be able to have access to a B-pay code and you'll be able to pay the whole lodgment in one transaction with that code. However what you need to know is if you start that batch and you don't submit it within 10 days of adding that first either an increase or new bond to the batch the batch will be automatically deleted after that 10 days. So again best business practice would be to ensure that you're lodging every week to avoid any issues. During the process there is reminders repeatedly through when is the due date of the bulk bond lodgment. We also send a seven day reminder to make sure that you are submitting within that day 10 day time frame. As you go through the service the any problems you will get error boxes. So it's very intuitive and it's designed to talk you through the whole process. An example of this would be that you must complete or remove the incomplete new lodgment before you can continue. You will have the ability to resume an incomplete lodgment or remove it. The system allows you to go back into a lodgment and do edits before you actually submit. So you'll be able to have time to actually review what you've entered. If there's anything you need to correct you can go back and edit before you submit. So again another example of a information box that will pop up. You can go back as I said and edit any lodgment that you've added and you need to make a correction. It is important to note that you will need to click continue and move through the screens again if you've gone back to edit just to make sure you don't lose your changes. Again information boxes that will help you out throughout the whole process. This is the BPay reference page so once you actually submit the bulk bond lodgment whether it's a mixture of all new bonds or a mix of increase in you you'll receive a notification of BPay and this will be through smart services. So let's run through the demonstration video and I'll be back shortly to go through some of the resources and then Lynn will go through the Office of Fair Trading and what's happening in that space. Here you'll see the terms and conditions for using RCA web services. Click on the checkbox to agree. Next you'll need to authenticate your identity using QGov. Answer your QGov username and password. Once logged in you can begin using the bulk bond lodgment web service. You'll first need to answer some basic questions about the properties you manage and there are helpful hints to guide you along the way if you're unsure of any of the answers. Make sure you check your details and enter a contact phone number. Next enter your RTA ID and the main email address that your organization or joint LESA partnership uses to interact with the RTA. Next it's important that you read these instructions as it tells you how to navigate this web service. You'll then start at the bond increase page where you can input any bond increases you want to add to your bulk bond lodgment. At the bottom of this page you'll see a section which calculates the number of bond increases and bond lodgments that have been added to the web service. As you continue this section will calculate the total amount owed for the bulk bond lodgment. To add a bond increase click on the add bond increase button on this page. Enter the bond number for the bond you want to top up. Check the details of the bond and the bond contributors to ensure they're correct. Then enter the new rent and bond amounts. You can choose to split the bond increase equally between the contributors or you can allocate different amounts to each contributor. If the tenancy end date has changed you can also update it here. If the RTA doesn't have an email address on record for any of the bond contributors you'll be asked to enter it here. Each bond contributor must have a unique email address to be able to use this web service. Enter the email addresses accurately to ensure they receive the required notifications. When you've entered all the necessary details for a bond increase you'll reach a summary page which has all the details you've just entered. Check that these are correct and use the edit functionality if you need to make any changes. You can print a copy of the bond increase or save it as a PDF on this page. Once that's done add your bond increase to the bulk bond lodgment. As you go through the web service messages will occasionally pop up reminding you that the bulk lodgment will be deleted if it's not submitted within 10 days of adding the first bond to the batch. This is in line with legislative requirements which state that a bond must be lodged by the managing party within 10 days of receiving payment from the bond contributors. Once you've added all bond increases to the bulk lodgment click on the continue button. This is the new lodgements page. Click on the add new lodgment button to add a bond to the bulk lodgment. You'll then need to add the property details. In this case we're going to submit a lodgment for a rooming accommodation rental. The process for lodging a bond is exactly the same as when it's lodged through the RTA single bond lodgment web service. Once you've completed the lodgment it will be added to the bond lodgment summary page. To make things easier for caravan and rooming accommodation providers you can click on the add button to lodge a bond for another room or dwelling at the same address. Once you've added all your bond lodgements and bond increases click on the continue button to go to the bulk bond lodge summary page. Check all your bonds and bond increases to make sure the information is correct. Remember that you can use the edit button if you need to go back and change anything. Once you've checked all the details are correct click the submit button to finalize and submit your bulk bond lodgment. After you've submitted your bulk bond lodgment to the RTA you'll be taken to this page where you can choose to print or save a summary of the bulk bond lodgment using the print my summary button. You can then proceed to payment. A BPAY code will be generated and you can use this to pay for the bulk bond lodgment. Once payment has been received and processed by the RTA you'll receive an acknowledgement of rental bond for the bulk bond lodgment. Hopefully that video helps to show that it's quite an easy process to use and we know that agents have been asking for this and the opportunity to lodge multiple bonds in the one transaction. The benefits of this bulk lodgment include everything that you can see on your screen but mostly it's more convenient and it will save you time as you're not relying on the post to get all those bonds and a check to the RTA. It also allows the RTA to process your requests really quickly so it will be a matter of days before you just have those bond numbers and acknowledgements because once we get the payment it's all done very quickly so you'll get them earlier than if you had posted them to us. Of course like all our other forms if you don't use web services and you still wish to do bond lodgments via paper form that's still available to you but I will suggest that if you're using the paper form please make sure that all fields are completed and it's important that the writing is eligible and also that the checks will add up to the total of the bonds that you're lodging. Now the RTA is producing multiple resources available to you to try to make this service as easy as possible for you. There's frequently asked questions, there's guides, you will have access to the video that we've just shown you again and that's all on our RTA website. Over to you then. Right thanks Kerr. So just in summary the steps that you're going to see on your screen now is how this process works so you need to enter your details remember this is your organisation and your RTA ID. You can add bond increases or you can just do new bonds so your bond top ups so if you're increasing the rent and the bond is going up as well so these are your bond top ups or a brand new tendency and you're doing new bonds. If it's new bonds you just go straight to lodging the new bonds. You can also review the lodgment details before you submit which is what Kath was going through and there's also as I said anytime you can do those sort of edits before you submit that final lodgment and then you pay by B pay but if you are only just lodging a single bond then you can use that normal single bond lodgment process. So again this process is showing you how to do that multiple bonds in one go. Now I'm just going to launch another poll so just bear with me. We're just wanting to have a bit of an understanding would you feel comfortable using the RTA web services bulk bond lodgment process? Having seen a little bit of what might actually happen as Kath said it's quite in you'll see boxes come up if it's got errors or that you need to do something so I'll just quickly get you to do that poll if you wouldn't mind just seeing how comfortable you may feel in using this process. I just leave that open. So we're having sort of like about 90, 92 percent of you say that you do feel comfortable using the process and we do have probably about just under 10 saying not quite sure so thank you so much I'll just end that thank you very much all right. So I'm just going to go now into talking about the Office of Fair Trading. So the RTA has been working with the Office of Fair Trading in relation to amendments to the Agents Financial Administration Regulation 2014. So this is going to support the real estate agents and the letting agents to use the online payment platforms so that's your BPAY so it will also ensure you as a licensed managing agent can meet your record keeping requirements for your trust account. So again you're going to be able to use that BPAY to do your bulk bond lodgements. So the RTA and Office of Fair Trading have also joined forces and signed a memorandum of understanding so we will be working much more closely with OFT. So this is in relation to investigations and will have an impact for licensed agents, letting agents and your property managers. So Office of Fair Trading can only investigate offences committed by a licensed real estate agent. They can't investigate in relation to tenants or private landlords. So there are two areas during a tenancy where an incident can occur that's an offence against legislation that both the RTA and the Office of Fair Trading enforce and these are when a rental bond is not paid to the RTA within 10 days and when rent payment is used for another purpose. So this could be that using rent towards a water bill or for cleaning. So customers can contact the RTA wishing to make an investigation request against a licensed agent but they may be redirected to Office of Fair Trading on these two offences. So the RTA will retain the investigations on any other alleged breaches of the residential tenses and room accommodation act 2008. And also if the RTA we will also retain it if it's as an example failure to lodge the bond with the RTA by an agent but it's also got another investigation or alleged or for alleged offences. So as an example if it's a failure to lodge the bond plus not providing the appropriate documentation at the start of tenancy or having unlawful terms or unlawfully entering the property then the RTA will retain that investigation. So what does that mean? So just click over just so that you can actually have a look at what the penalty provisions are for both the residential tenses and room accommodation act and the agents financial administration act and the Property Occupation Act. So the RTA Act penalty units is 40 units under section 116 also sections 117 and 119 also have 40 penalty units as well each and that relates to your bond installments and your roomy accommodation. But under AFA Act section 16 this talks about dealing with an amount on a receipt and also pay it into an agent's trust account or your section 22 is about permitted drawings from a trust account. Under section 206 of the Property Occupation Act this section talks about wrongful conversion on false accounts meaning they receive an amount belonging to someone else or falsely accounts for that money. For the rent used for another purpose and again as I said before this could be used that you're using rent towards a water bill or that there's maybe overpaid rent that's been put towards cleaning or damages. So with this section you'll see that the RTRA Act has a maximum of 40 penalty units under section 96. However under the Agents Financial Administration Act section 21-2 when payments may be made from the trust accounts an amount may be paid from a trust account only in a way that's committed under the Act. So I think it's quite clear and as you can see Office of Fair Trading have some significant penalties under their legislation. So one penalty unit as of 1 July 2021 this year was worth $137.85 but if you're a corporation then that's times five that. So when you start looking at the penalty units themselves this can certainly be significant. So the penalty unit amount is not set by the RTA or the Office of Fair Trading it's set by the Queensland Penalties and Sentence Regulation and it's enforced by SPIR which is the State Penalties Enforcement Registry. So if you need information on the Property Occupation Act or the Agents Financial Administration Act or your real estate licensing requirements then we'd say please go the Office of Fair Trading's website you can find that qld.gov.au forward slash law forward slash fair trading and on the main page you'll see a box regarding the regulated industries including that property industry side. So the RTA website also has a section on our investigations so to request an investigation customers will need to go through what we call a decision making process first and answer some questions. This is to ensure that the complaint that we're receiving relates to penalty provisions of the Act and not a breach of a tenancy or rooming agreement. So if you have a disagreement over how bond is getting paid out or you have a breach of a tenancy or rooming agreement then this is a process that's dealt with by our dispute resolution team. So we have done previous webinars on resolving disputes they're all available on our website. If there's been a breach of the penalty provisions of the Act then this is what the RTA's investigations team can deal with. So time frames do apply for making a complaint with our investigations team and more information is available on our website rta.qld.gov.au and also forward slash investigations. So make sure you have signed up for our e-news so that we can keep you informed on any key topics or changes. If you have a colleague or you know someone else in the rental sector that would benefit from being regularly informed please get them to sign up as well. So we do produce various educational resources, our webinars on tenancy legislation and key topics as well as our tenancy podcast series. So accessing both of these through our website or for your podcast through your preferred app. So Kath I'm going to get you to come back and I think we will go back over to the questions so just bear with me while we just pull that over here. Thanks Liana I know that you've been answering quite a few questions there and acknowledging people so thank you very much. I just go way back up here so bear with me. Okay so I think what about bond tops ups from Irene I think that was actually you've actually answered that with our bulk bond lodgements you can do top ups as well as new bonds. Rebecca's asking is the ten days starting from the receding it into the trust account or receding it as a bond against the tenant well that is actually as soon as you do take as soon as you recede it in your trust account you have actually accepted it would that be a fair answer Kath? Really so yes then. Yeah from Martin will a BPAY code change each time? So the reference BPAY reference will be unique to that lodgement so yes the reference number changes every different lodgement that you submit. And Rebecca's just asking so the tenants don't need to sign anything but don't do they when they use any of the websites? No they don't but they're part of the processes that we will send them an email to make sure that they agree to what's been lodged as part of the the bulk bond lodgement for an example we had one yesterday where we sent an email to the tenant to verify the details and the agent had actually got had entered 51 Bond Street rather than 33 so the tenant came back to us and said no that's actually incorrect so we were able to then confirm with all the parties and change it and make sure that it was all the correct information before that went through the process. And by using the QGARV identification process that's that kind of becomes your identity that kind of becomes your signature isn't it? But that is definitely the signature and we and the good thing about that is we know that they are who they are they say they are and that that is a very strong authenticated digital signature. So if you are using web services for people who've actually made the inquiries about do you have to have the tents sign anything? The only way you'd need them to sign if you're going to lodge it by paper form or they don't have a unique email address so keep that in mind that if they don't have an email address and they can't do the QGARV login and identify themselves and go through the process then you probably will need to do the paper form. Hang on Kath we're just going through a bit more. So is it Maria? Using property me which I know Maria happens to be one of the real estate agencies trust account program. Has the functionality for pay BPAY? So can we be issued with a bill of code and BPAY reference number to be able to lodge as bulk payment that way? So I think we actually once they do submit it we actually then send the agent the bill of reference code and the BPAY code don't we Kath? Yes so you would have to go through the process you would need to add all the bulk of the lodgements to the bulk the submit and then you would be given that BPAY code and the reference number that you could then pay that through. Okay and as I said for a licensed agent now the Agents Financial Administration Act has now changed to a regulation has changed to allow that BPAY to come from your trust account. Elaine's just asking as well can we lodge with a mobile number no email address? At this point in time we do require an email address again it's part of the process that we email the tenants to make sure that we get their confirmation and their signature basically on on the digital form. So at this point in time yes we do require an email address the tenants also require a unique email address to access the QGov platform. Martyn's back again is what if tenants share the same email address? I know this has happened to you too hasn't it Cat? Yeah it has so I am one of those people that share an email address with their partner and when he went on to my gov and used our joint email account when come my time to actually get on to Medicare I couldn't actually use that email account that email address because he'd already used it. So my solution to that was I went on and I created a email account for myself and I used that email address purely to access government websites because you all it's just standard practice that you need a unique email address. So if that's an option for your tenants perhaps that moving forward is a good way for them to actually have availability to these online services. And again too like obviously they don't have if it's a co-tenancy and a co-contributor and one doesn't have an email address then potentially you're looking at lodging that by pay-per-form aren't you Cat? Correct. So Tracy's just asking here if a tenant pays their rent and bond in one transaction and it's accidentally picked up as rent and goes straight to the owner is there a penalty to the agent for this? Well in a roundabout sort of way because the rent and like you're obviously using the part of the receding in and the payment for another purpose you could potentially say yes but obviously you're going to act very swiftly and rectify that straight away. So and then obviously provide some evidence if someone did actually do a complaint. Shirley's just asking which I think we actually answered this too will be pay reference change each lodgement I think you said yes wasn't that right Cat? Yes it will the reference will change each lodgement. So we've got quite a few people asking that likewise again with the email and yes look a lot of older couples do only have one email so again if they're not as Cat said in her example she had to sign up with a Gmail or a hotmail account for herself if that's not the case then again you're probably going back to that paper form. So I think I've actually just mentioned quite a few of that. Dean's just asking in relation to the QGAP account Cat in relation to international students. So I know that this year we did add a couple extra items for identification. We added the international visas this is a work in progress we're aware that it's you know it's hard for a lot of international students if they haven't got their Medicare card issued straight away or they don't have a license to meet that 100 point so the RTA is continually trying with working with QGALF to broaden the documents and make the process available to a wider range of our customers. Yeah and Chris is just saying like sure the driver's license is suitable enough ID and that's probably Chris just saying now QGALF is a separate process it's just purely an identification process that the RTA uses from the government it's not the RTA process so we it's there are two processes when you use the any of our RTA web services so QGALF is one process to get you through identification through them first and then we have our process as well. Martin's just asking how long does a tenant have to pay for their top up so the rent's been increased and the bond has been increased as well okay so oh I can use that for you sorry that's one month they've got one month to pay that for you and what happens if the tenant does not pay the bond top up within the 10 days we need to finalize the bulk transaction so that's not I think what you're saying before Kath that you can go in and edit can't you you can potentially remove I would go in and remove that increase from your bulk and then proceed to go ahead and lodge the bulk and then when you actually do get the money from the tenant add that to your next bulk to your next back chair so what's the session timeout so like when you use web services is there like a timeout that people have that and obviously property managers and agents out there busy during the day so they probably do a multiple tasks definitely so if you get interrupted a lot which I'm sure you do if you start a session on the web service and you're you're called away to do a million things it will time out after two hours and you will need to log back into it so that's just a security thing that if you stepped away from your computer it's a fairly standard practice but if they if there's no activity within two hours it will actually automatically lock you out and Kath I think it's also two very clear instructions on our website and one of our statements we have is that any person knowingly submitting false or misleading details in web services is committing an offense under Queensland law so can you give today like our audience today an example of this so I guess we've mentioned before that it it is sometimes difficult because of that the emails that it's a mandatory field and if your tenants share an email if one you enter one and then you just make up the other like no one that that's not helpful and again it could fall into that false and misleading information because it's very evident that that is not their real email address yeah and we you know as the RTA we do lots of checks and balances as well and also to our systems can pull data reports on people who are using those constant false email addresses and again as you've said previously then the paper process is always there in those situations yeah so these are also good news that you know we launched this on Tuesday and with like within a very short time I think you said it was like within 20 minutes we received our first bulk on Lodge and spy web services say since Tuesday how many have we actually received who have actually gone down this path so from this morning when I checked we'd already received 56 bulk lodgements and that totaled over 300 individual lodgements a mixture of bond increases and and new bonds so we have spoken to a couple of the agents that have launched using this service and they were glowing reports on it they just couldn't believe how simple it was and they're loving the one the pay transaction for for all the lodgements that they're doing okay I'm just a bit conscious of the time we're coming to an end but thanks Bernard for your comment in relation to student accommodation as well um Alice I think it's Alison maybe um asking the 30-day bond top up does that three days from the notification of the rent increase or three days from when the commencement of the renewal um obviously I'm thinking here that like when the rent has actually increased and you're asking for the more you know to for the bond we topped up that's when they've actually got the time to pay Kath a couple questions for you please if you launch by post can you still pay by b-pay rather than a check um there is a possibility that we could create b-pays for you but that's not our preferred option and it's not our standard practice okay so if you are posting in it's usually with the check otherwise that's why we've created this new web services um can we lodge paper lodgements by email no can we no so thanks a lot department of housing sorry what was that Kath only if it's a department of housing involvement can we accept them okay so we will accept only department of housing lodgements by email that would be it um and I do agree Chris too checks are a little bit backwards um but again this is why we have created this new web services because as Kath said before a lot of research a lot of consultations been done over the years where the agents have been wanting to look at doing bulk lodgements online using the b-pay as well um I think we would just end it there Kath because I think we have actually got to our time as such so look um our website has a lot of information all our forms and educational resources available at rta.qld.gov.au and as a final reminder please make sure that you do always use the latest rta forms um our friendly contact center is available on Monday to Friday a 3 to 5 1300 3 double six three double one and keep in mind too if you are got some issues with web services our staff in our call center have been trained and they can actually assist you um going through any challenges as well so remember too our survey is going to come up shortly about um the webinar and also we'd love your feedback what topics you'd like to know more about and also your feedback on web services as well so thanks Kath and Lauren for helping out today no problem thanks everyone thanks for coming along and yeah and thanks everyone for joining us and we'll see you next time the webinar will now end