 Hi there, and thank you for tuning in. My name is Sarah Furie, and I'm the new Head of Client Services at Paper of South Africa. I've been with Paper of Fover team years and was Head of Sales for the past five. I now oversee the Best in Industry Client Services team of 16 dedicated and amazing people with competencies across three areas of excellence, onboarding, support, and customer success. Together, we help rental agents use their time more efficiently to achieve rapid and sustainable growth while enhancing the way they manage their trust environments. Today, I'll be presenting what I like to call Rental Management Rocket Fuel. Tips and tools for rental managers, administrators, and principals that will help you launch your business to new heights. I'd like to start by discussing compliance, which should be one of the top priorities for every property management company. The new Property Practitioners Act, or PPA for short, came into effect in February and governs the activities of all property practitioners in South Africa. Amongst these regulations are stringent rules about the signing of mandates, disclosure with regard to properties, introduction of and dealings with lessees, and the management of funds pertaining to property rentals and sales. Legitimate landlords and property owners will only want to work with agents who abide by the PPA and ensure that property transactions are legally compliant and ethically sound. Section 54 of the PPA states that property practitioners must keep separate trust accounts for their client's trust monies. These accounts, plus the practitioner's business accounts, must be audited every year. As per the previous requirements, these annual audits should be undertaken by accredited auditors. However, the PPA introduces the possibility of exemption in sections 4 and 23. In terms of section 4, any person may, subject to specific provisions of the section, be exempted from compliance with any specific provision of the PPA. Section 23 offers the possibility of exemption from keeping a trust account under certain circumstances and states that exempted property practitioners' accounting records may undergo a different, lighter reviewing process. Regulation 2 provides further details, with Regulation 2.1 outlining the circumstances in which this can happen. Property practitioners will need to apply for exemption because the process does not happen automatically. Once exempted, you can have your accounts independently reviewed by a registered accountant, which will be far easier and cheaper. Property practitioners must also use accredited payment processing agents, such as paper-up, to be exempted from operating their own trust accounts. In addition to a section 54.1 trust account, there needs to be an interest-bearing section 54.2 account, within which all damage deposits are held for the duration of the tenancy. These funds need to be safely administered, accounted for and paid out to the tenant at the end of the lease period, unless of course there were deductions for damage to the property, lost keys, etc. For our client's peace of mind, and to help agencies across South Africa maintain an exemplary compliance statement, we recently published a furbished, fully compliant, template lease documentation in line with the new relevant legislation and regulations, including the Protection of Personal Information Act, number 4 of 2013, puppy, and the Property Practitioners Act, number 22 of 2019, PPA. These are available to our clients for use or guidance, should you prefer to update your own documents, free of charge. But before any of these contractual procedures are set into motion, you need to prospect for landlords and source good tenants. Without an effective approach to sourcing both, you won't be able to grow your business. The best method for signing more landlords is to first understand what they want, to have the investments taken care of diligently and to receive their rent quickly and in full. To ensure this, you need to offer a streamlined and secure payment service, with all the features that landlords just can't resist. This goes a long way in reputation building and gaining referrals. As any rental agent knows, recommendations are essential for growing your business. Not only do they provide a valuable source of leads, but they can also help you build relationship with potential clients. But to earn referrals, your service should be impeccable. That is the most powerful recommendation of all. At PayProp, we also provide our clients with marketing materials as an aid when pitching to prospective landlords. Our brochure outlines landlord-specific benefits, such as the PayProp owner app, free of charge on iOS and Android, which give landlords quick and easy access to their portfolio's payment data anytime, anywhere. This makes tax season a breeze, as landlords can easily retrieve their rental income from the year on their mobile device, cutting down on landlord inquiries. The next challenge remains one of the biggest for intelligence, finding quality tenants with acceptable credit scores, sufficient funds for one-time damage deposit and enough income to pay the rent every month. After all, growing your commission means growing the amount of rent you collect and without good tenants that pay on time, your landlords and your business won't thrive. An experienced rental agent will not only initially identify a good tenant for the landlord, but they will also manage their relationship and advice on any reasonable rent increases in the current climate. A good rental agent will know what's acceptable in their local area and can provide the reality check needed to help manage expectations. Prospective tenants' payment history can be requested using PayProp's market-leading tenant assessment report. This report combines a traditional credit score from a credit agency with past rental payment data from paper-powered agencies. This gives a better indication of a tenant's ability to pay the rent as it includes real payment data from previous tenancies. Paper-powered agencies from across South Africa can choose to contribute to this database. We may have information on a tenant's payment history if they have previously rented a property via one of our current clients in any province in South Africa. This information enables other agencies on our books to choose renters for their landlords more wisely. Once the tenant is placed, the monthly reoccurring admin begins. The best rental agents prioritize communication. Rental management is a people business after all. When dealing with landlords, tenants and associated providers, keeping communication professional, timely and accurate is essential. Traditional payments, rental payment workflows would require agents to type an email and invoice to every tenant every month for the duration of the tenancy. Once the tenant makes the payments, it then needs to be identified, allocated to the right property in the relevant trust account. At this point, a receipt also needs to be written and sent to the tenant and a statement to the landlord showing receipt of the rent and any deductibles. There is a risk at every step that someone will make a mistake as each document needs to be created and updated manually each time. With PropTech however, all of this client communication can be automated and trusted as each document is a complete statement of live transactions taken directly from bank records. These statements cannot be edited or deleted, giving all parties confidence that the money shown in the statements has been distributed as outlined. Trust is easy to break but it's easier to gain when you provide your owner's data that is bank-informed accurate. I asked Michelle Deccan's industry innovator LiveWider Media Presence and Paper of South Africa's new deputy CEO for tips as we head into the festive season. She advised invoice tenants earlier than usual in the month of December. So even though they didn't know need to pay right away, they'll have been reminded not to spend all of their hard-earned rands on holiday shopping that they may receive earlier in their month with an earliest payment salary run and then have nothing left to pay the rent when the time comes. Reconciling rent payments is one of the most cumbersome and stressful processes a rental agent must go through. As the chances of allocating the wrong payment to the wrong tenants and property is high in trust environments that rely on manual bookkeeping. For example, it's easy to get confused if you have multiple properties that charge the same rent. With a smart payment processor rent paid by bank transfer, debit order or instant EFT arrives in your trust account pre-reconciled, making it impossible to allocate rent payment from tenant A to property B. And even if a tenant uses the wrong reference number, which when paying the rent, paper will suggest a property match based on intelligent criteria like the tenant's name, address, invoice amounts and more. Receiving money into paper up and paying it out again is a straight-through process, only requiring your approval at the reconciliation and the distribution stages, though this too can be automated to happen automatically. Once a rental payment is automatically reconciled, paper allocates the money based on the payment rules you set up when you first added the property to our platform. Firstly, your commission is paid. Next, any payments to contractors and monies allocated to the property accounts are apportioned. The remainder is then sent to the landlord. This process can be automated and only requires your approval. This process also gives you a comprehensive record of the money from the moment it inserts your trust account to when it is paid out. As paper up is integrated into the banking system in all countries we operate in, rent can be paid out faster to landlords, contractors and your commission accounts. Attract the best workmen and contractors, safe in the knowledge that you can pay them faster than your competitors. Let's review, shall we? A tenant wants to rent the 12,000-rant two-bedroom duplex he found on private property. He completes the tenant application form, the paper of tenant application form, which gives consent to run a successful credit check. He then signs the lease agreement. A good payment platform will enable you to create a recurring invoice for the duration of the tenancy, determine and facilitate the tenant's payment method. For example, if you choose debit order, paper will automatically withdraw the money from their bank account every month, establish a flexible and powerful settlement rules and, four, stay compliant with the PPA's regulation for trust accounts. Your job is now essentially done with regards to this tenancy. Paper will automatically send out the invoice, collect and allocate the monies, set up their outgoing payments, correctly apportioned and staged for you to just simply approve. Once you approve the outgoing payments, the platform will pay all beneficiaries, that's landlords, commission accounts and third party providers in the correct order, send them payment notices, update and send tenant statements and update and send owner statements, store the proof of payment on the platform for future reference and then auto-reconcile the trust account. With those key administrative tasks automated and taken care of, you and your team can now dedicate more time to prospecting new landlords and securing good tenants to grow your business. But what else does an agency need to boost its rental management? Well, the right tech will help your company grow without putting a strain on your staff. The basic tech tools needed to run a rental portfolio include, means to communicate with staff, owners and tenants, WhatsApp for example and an email marketing service like MailChimp, cloud storage, social media accounts, a subscription to listing portals like private property, business accounting software, inspection and maintenance tools and a rental payment processor like PayProp that includes nearly all of the above plus more. One new development we've added to our platform this year is an integrated maintenance feature, which gives our users a simple and convenient way to manage maintenance and repair tickets directly from the platform. You could use this feature to let tenants log maintenance ticket themselves, create your own maintenance tickets, maintenance tickets to inform the tenants of plan work, to communicate directly with tenants about maintenance issues through the tenant portal, add private notes to tickets to keep colleagues up to date, store PDF invoices and images on any ticket and automate email notifications to tenants every time you update the ticket. Agents who make use of a good payment processor have several additional tools at their disposal that help them streamline their day-to-day operations on the platform and make their lives easier. PayProp also offers landlord and tenant visibility and self-service through the owner app and tenant portal. Tenant screening with a tenant assessment report, instant online payments with Oso integration and other industry leading functionality included free or at a minimal cost. Some of you may remember Samantha Ferrera, Matia, who is now head of client services for PayProp North America, asked her for some tips on how to optimize your property portfolio. She said, whether you use PayProp or another system, your property rental portfolio should receive the same ongoing care and maintenance that you would give to your home to ensure everything in its order and you're getting optimal use out of it as well as peace of mind. A disorganized portfolio, clogged with junk data or hiding loose ends or enabling wrong doing through lax processes can disrupt the flow operations, reduce productivity, expose the business to risk and ultimately cause sleepless nights. So here are six checks you can perform regularly to keep your rental portfolio in peak condition. One, check for deposit consistency. Quite simply, you should have the same number of damage deposits as they are active tenants on your portfolio of rental properties and their individual value should be roughly equal to the monthly rental value. Any cases of active tenants who don't have deposits should be looked into unless there's a valid reason for it. This will clear up any confusion around absent or oddly valued deposits and can be a starting point for any deeper investigations that may reveal other irregularities. But it's inactive tenants who still have damaged deposits against their names that you really want to keep a close eye on. Check for this regularly to ensure that deposits are paid out as soon as possible after tenant has moved out. Once that's resolved and for added peace of mind, properties on pay prop can be disabled upon vacancy at which points reoccurring invoices will stop automatically. By clearing out expired contracts and ensuring that money is always returned to his rightful owner, you can keep your books tidy and your business honourable. Number two, verify credit notes. Credit notes, credit memos, journals, entries, no matter what you call them, they should be used to correct mistakes. Or when funds from another source, like a damaged deposit, were used to reduce an outstanding amount. And to be clear, this should be highly exceptional and not the rule. Otherwise, excessive or unexplained credit notes pose a risk to the principal. Take a look at how many credit notes were created in relation to the number of invoices generated for the same period. Make sure that each one includes a clear description of why it was created to avoid any misunderstandings. Any discrepancies are worth investigating. Pay prop's customizable permission settings allow you to restrict only authorized users to create credit notes. Three, monitor credit balances. It's important to not only check the tenant's statements to see if specific accounts are in credit, but also whether they are in arrears. A portfolio becomes messy when arrears are not handled promptly. And the messy it gets, the harder it is for the principal to analyze or recoup outstanding amounts which increases risk. Pay prop's advanced arrears take automatically flags when a payment is missed and allows you to chase any outstanding amounts over email and SMS. Our system gets results. 64% of tenants respond within 48 hours. Additionally, whether the tenant over or underpaid due to inaccurate additional or missing charges on their invoice, you can prevent by having to explain a miscalculation later by regularly checking that the tenant's statements are correct. Number four, manage notifications. Enable, if you can, notifications to beneficiaries, for example, owners and payers, for example, tenants, whenever a transaction is made on your rental portfolio. It could be the single most important move you can make to reduce arrears, emissions and miscommunication. Pay prop's automated and bank accurate client communication keeps everyone up to date on the status of their monies. Number five, action outstanding invoices. A general daily sweep of your outstanding invoices can save you time and money in the long run. Try to ensure that even small pending deposits are not left unallocated as they can add up and become costly. Failed beneficiary payments can alert you to issues that are easy to overlook but important to address, such as close accounts or incorrect banking details. Pay prop's landing page is your dashboard, giving you a live comprehensive portfolio summary that includes the amount of outstanding invoices every time you log in. I also spoke with Denise LaRue, one of our platform experts and support specialists who also host our monthly online training events. Denise started out as a rental administrator herself over 20 years ago, so I asked her for a practical hack for newcomers to the rental industry. She suggested highlighting action dates on a calendar as a visual aid while learning how to get into the monthly rhythm of managed rentals. She says knowing what happens when it takes the guesswork out of remembering important deadlines. For instance, take a yellow marker and highlight your variable payment rule action date, for example the 18th or the 20th of each month on your calendar for whole year. Then take a blue marker and highlight your automated fixed payment rule date as the 25th of each month on your calendar. She would also suggest taking a third color, maybe green or something soft on the eye, and identify how many days in advance the rental invoices generate. This is called the lead date on pay prop. Often it's three, five, seven or even 10 days before the end of each month. When pay prop pre-generates, the reoccurring invoices and sends it out to your tenants by email or SMS. You can use the same life hack even if you use a digital calendar. Take advantage of these tools and processes, either as a pay prop client or in your existing setup to maintain the integrity and health of your rental portfolio. If you do, you will raise your value proposition to your clients, helping you to grow your business. And that concludes today's webinar on rental management rocket fuel. Thank you for joining me today. I'm Sarah Furry, head of client services at Pay Prop South Africa, and I hope these tips helped with the for the help, the growth of your business blast off in the near future. Thank you.