Why moving to automated rental payments software is paramount to growing your rent roll

For most Australian agencies, the choice of software boils down to this:

• Traditional trust account software, built around a pooled trust account and end-of-month processes.

• Managed, which runs a trust-free, wallet-based payment system with automated, real-time rental payments and no manual trust reconciliation.

Both manage properties. The difference is that an automated rental payments platform like Managed is designed to remove trust accounting and the laborious end-of-month bottleneck altogether.

How traditional trust account software works

Legacy platforms were designed around a simple assumption: The agency will hold client money in a pooled trust account.

The typical trust accounting workflow looks like this:

• Tenants pay their rent to this trust account.

• This trust accounting software reconciles the rental funds.

• Next, bills and bond payments are processed from the rental funds, and ABA files are downloaded for the landlords, agency, and the tradies.

• Following this, batch payments are uploaded to bank accounts.

Only then are payments made to the bank accounts of the agency, tradies, and owners.

Then there’s the dreaded manual end-of-month reconciliation work, where property managers are required to cross-check ledgers with bank statements. Property managers must reconcile every transaction between the trust account bank statement and the property management software ledger.

Property managers must download bank files or statements, then receipt and allocate payments to ledgers.

1. Throughout the month, they:

• chase missing references and dishonours

• adjust ledgers

• prepare disbursement runs.

2. At the end of the month, they:

• reconcile trust ledger versus bank balance

• fix discrepancies

• batch disburse funds to owners and suppliers

• generate owner statements and audit reports.

Trust account software helps with this, but it doesn’t remove the underlying work. Agencies still have to:

• operate a compliant trust account

• reconcile it regularly

• prepare for annual trust audits in each state or territory.

This administrative process will only increase and become more cumbersome as an agency’s rent roll grows. Property managers would have to spend more time downloading, receipting, reconciling, and disbursing rent.

Managed at a glance: Automated and trust-free

On the other hand, Managed keeps all the property management workflows agencies expect (properties, leases, maintenance, inspections, and communications), but its standout feature is payments:

• No trust account to manage

• Rental funds are never held or accessed by the agency

• No manual reconciliation or end-of-month processes

Every user – agency, owner, tenant, and tradie – gets a Managed Wallet, described as a digital bank account. Funds are sent into wallets, paid between wallets and withdrawn to bank accounts.

This means there are no reconciliations, no end-of-month or accounting errors, no daily downloads, and no disbursements.

All transactions take place in Australia through payments partner Zai, using NPP for instant payments.

Managed is a 360° total property management solution, so you don’t need separate trust account software. In other words, the software doesn’t just help you run a trust account – it lets you operate without one while complying with the law from day one.

Real-time rental payment automation versus batch disbursements

Traditional trust account model

• Tenants pay into the trust bank account.

• Payments are reconciled and disbursed in batches, typically at month-end (sometimes mid-month plus month-end).

• Owners get paid after reconciliation is complete; trade invoices are slotted around those cycles.

The software may schedule disbursement runs, but you still have to:

• make sure the ledger and bank balances match

• handle dishonours and exceptions

• manually sign off on owner and creditor payments.

Managed’s wallet and split engine

With Managed, the flow is completely different:

1. Tenant pays via fast bank transfer (Osko), PayID/BSB, BPAY, or other supported methods.

2. Funds land in the tenant's wallet, not the agency’s trust account.

3. Managed’s “split engine” automatically:

• allocates the payment to the correct tenancy.

• calculates the agency’s management fee.

• determines how much to set aside for upcoming bills.

• routes the net rent to the owner’s bank account or property wallet.

4. If the owner chooses instant payout, net rent (after expenses) is never withheld – it goes to their bank in real time using NPP. If they choose weekly or monthly, funds accumulate in the property wallet and pay out on schedule.

When the tenant pays rent, it will be instantly (approximately five seconds) deposited into your bank account if instant is selected. Net rental income (after expenses) is never held but instead paid to the owner’s account in real-time” for instant payouts.

For agencies, that means:

• no waiting for end-of-month cycles

• no batch disbursement runs to owners and trades

• fees and owner payments happen as part of the same automated transaction.

Where traditional trust software burns time

Across Australian agencies, trust accounting typically consumes big blocks of staff time in:

• Daily banking downloads – importing statements or ABA files

• Rent receipting – matching deposits by reference and amount

• Error correction – fixing incorrect references, misallocations, or dishonours

• Trust reconciliation – aligning bank balance with trust ledger (often daily and monthly)

• Owner and creditor disbursements – running batch payments and checking totals

• Audit preparation – collating reports and reconciling historic discrepancies

These tasks scale roughly with the number of properties and complexity. The software provides tools, but the human effort doesn’t disappear.

How much time Managed can save (illustrative example)

Let’s use a realistic but simplified example to quantify the difference.

Disclaimer: These figures are indicative only. Actual savings depend on your processes, rent roll size, staff mix, and existing software.

Example rent roll:

• 500 residential properties

• Average rent: $600/week

• Almost all tenants pay electronically

With traditional trust account software

Assume per month:

• Rent receipting and matching: two to three minutes per property

• Trust reconciliations (daily + month-end): approximately 12-15 hours

• Owner/creditor disbursement runs: approximately eight to 10 hours

• Audit prep, error correction, reporting tweaks: approximately six to eight hours

Conservatively:

• 500 properties × five minutes each in rent-related admin ≈ 2,500 minutes (approximately 41.7 hours)

• Reconciliation and disbursements ≈ 25 hours

• Audit/report prep ≈ 7 hours

Total ≈ 73 to 75 staff hours per month just on trust-account-related tasks.

At an all-in staff cost of, say, $45 per hour, that’s around $3,300 per month, or ~$40,000 a year, largely tied to trust processes.

With Managed, users have accounts that are owned by them. Rental funds are never held in a trust account. There are no daily downloads, reconciliations, disbursements, or end-of-month.

You still have to:

• monitor arrears and exceptions

• review bills and approve payments

• respond to owners and tenants.

But you no longer need to:

• download bank files to reconcile a trust account

• reconcile trust ledger versus bank balance

• run batch disbursement files

• spend days on trust audit prep.

If that cuts trust-related admin from around 75 hours per month to, say, 20 to 25 hours focused on exceptions and approvals, you’re saving roughly:

• 50 hours per month

• ≈ $2,000–$2,250 per month at $45 per hour

• ≈ $24,000–$27,000 per year

And those hours are freed up for:

• more client contact and service

• growth activities (appraisals, sales-to-PM conversions)

• training and system improvement.

Reconciliation and disbursements: what Managed actually removes

Traditional trust software

• Reconciliation means comparing trust ledger balances with actual bank statements and resolving differences.

• Disbursements require generating payment files, authorising them in the bank portal, and updating ledgers.

Even with “automated” features, staff still touch every part of the process.

Managed’s architecture changes the job:

• Every user has a wallet; every payment is a wallet-to-wallet or wallet-to-bank transfer inside the platform’s ledger.

• Because the platform itself is the source of truth for balances and transactions, there is no separate trust bank ledger to reconcile.

• Owner and creditor payments are triggered automatically based on rules (instant/weekly/monthly, bill due dates, and property wallet settings).

In practice, reconciliation becomes:

• Exception management (“Why did this payment fail?”), not bulk matching.

• Spot-checking and exporting reports, not line-by-line alignment of bank versus ledger.

Disbursements become:

• Part of the same automated transaction is triggered when rent is paid, or a bill is due, not a separate manual workflow.

Reporting and dashboards: real-time visibility instead of static reports

Traditional trust software gives you:

• ledgers and standard reports

• often clunky dashboards that still rely on the trust ledger being up-to-date and reconciled.

Managed is built to surface live operational data because the payments layer and property management workflows are on the same platform.

• Personalised dashboard – view all your data in one place at the same time.

For principals and senior property managers, that means a real-time overview of:

• properties under management

• rent status and arrears (with dedicated arrears review tools)

• upcoming and outstanding bills

• maintenance tasks and work orders

For owners, Managed promotes the ability to:

• View your property like never before. Track maintenance, arrears, and all the important information related to your investment.

Action centre and property manager tools

The property manager guide covers features like:

• Action centre and tasks – a central place to manage tasks, bills, and approvals

• Reviewing arrears through the Managed App

• How to enter and pay a bill

• Where do I find the tenancy ledger?

Together, these give property managers a single source of truth for:

• Rent receipts – per tenancy and portfolio

• Outstanding payments – arrears and unpaid bills

• Tradespeople invoices – via the Marketplace and bill workflows

• Pending disbursements – funds held in property wallets for upcoming expenses

• Payment processing status – including how long payments take and what to do if a direct debit bounces.

Because the dashboard is tied directly to the underlying wallet ledger, principals can see issues as they emerge, not just in month-end reports.

Always audit-ready: monthly and annual reporting without the scramble

Traditional trust account audits in Australia often involve:

• checking reconciliations over a sample period

• verifying that bank balances match trust ledgers

• testing a selection of tenant/owner files and transactions

• confirming that trust deficits/ surpluses have been handled correctly.

This can mean days of work preparing reports and supporting documents.

Managed’s model simplifies this dramatically:

• No trust account to audit for rent flows – agencies never handle any funds that are processed between the tenant and the landlord.

• Every transaction is time-stamped and linked to a property, wallet, and user.

• The platform is cloud-based; data is centralised and exportable.

• The help centre includes specific guidance in Managed for end-of-financial-year (EOFY) processes, and owners can access their own statements directly.

In practical terms, “audit-ready” means:

• Monthly: You can export transaction histories, tenancy ledgers, and wallet balances in a few clicks, with no need to cross-check against a bank-run trust ledger.

• Annually: EOFY owner statements and portfolio reports are generated from the same dataset you’ve been using all year; there’s no parallel “audit spreadsheet” to maintain.

Independent reviews note that Managed’s direct payment solution and virtual account system bypass the need for traditional trust accounts and simplify payment flows, reducing mismanagement risk and enabling real-time data and automated workflows.

Auditors still need to understand the model, but instead of trawling through reconciliations, they can:

• inspect transaction logs and exports from Managed

• confirm that flows match your documented processes and state legislation.

Side-by-side comparison: Managed versus traditional trust account software

Upgrade to a more efficient operating model

For Australian property managers, the shift from traditional trust account software to Managed isn’t just a “software upgrade”. It’s a change in their operating model from batch reconciliation, pooled funds, and end-of-month stress to real-time, rule-based payments with no trust account and no manual reconciliation.

You still need to:

• document your flows

• confirm compliance with your state regulator and auditor

• train your team around exceptions and approvals.

But once that’s in place, the hours and mental load you reclaim can be devoted to what actually grows your business: better service, stronger relationships, and a larger, more profitable rent roll.

Disclaimer: Any time and cost savings described above are indicative and based on general industry workloads. Actual results will vary by agency size, processes, staffing and existing software. You should review your own internal data and seek independent accounting or financial advice before making any business decisions or marketing claims.