Setting Up the Fund

The fund setup wizard takes you from a fresh invitation to a live communal fund in five guided phases. Each phase saves as you go, so you can pause and pick up later without losing work. The whole sequence runs in about twenty-five minutes if you have your details ready.

Who this is for

Estate managers who have just accepted a Tenantify invitation and need to stand up a new communal fund. You may be running an existing estate that is moving to digital collection, or starting a brand-new one.

What you’ll get done

A registered estate, every unit catalogued, a Paystack subaccount linked to the estate’s bank, the initial resident roster invited, and a contribution plan that defines who pays how much and when.

Before you start

• The estate’s bank details. Account name, bank, and NUBAN. A dedicated estate account is strongly preferred over a personal one.
• A list of units. Block names, flat numbers, or whatever scheme the estate uses. Bring twenty units or two — the form scales.
• At least one resident’s contact details. Name, email, phone, and the unit they occupy. You can add the rest later.
• The contribution figure. Monthly, quarterly, or annual amount that residents will pay into the fund.

You do not need a CAC certificate or a stamped authorisation letter today — those apply to landlord rent collection, not fund collection.

Steps

1. Accept your invitation

Open the email from Tenantify titled “You’ve been invited to manage an estate fund”. Click Accept invitation. The link is unique to your invite and expires after a fixed window.

Enter your full name, set a password (at least eight characters, with one uppercase letter, one lowercase, one number, and one special character), and confirm your Nigerian phone number. Tenantify accepts +2348012345678, 2348012345678, or 08012345678.

Submit. You are logged in immediately and land on the Fund Setup page.

2. Register the estate

On the setup page, the first phase asks for estate basics:

• Estate name. What residents recognise it as.
• City and state. Pick from the Nigerian state list.

Click Save and continue. The estate is created and you are pushed to phase two.

3. Add property units

Add one row per unit. The columns are flexible: a typical entry looks like Block A / Flat 2 or simply Unit 12. Use whatever scheme the residents already use.

Click Add row for each unit. When the list matches the estate’s real layout, click Save and continue.

You do not need to assign residents to units yet. That happens in the next phases or later via the Residents page.

4. Connect the estate’s bank

This is where contributions will settle. Click Connect bank account.

• Pick the estate’s bank from the dropdown (GTBank, Access, Zenith, First Bank, UBA, and so on).
• Enter the ten-digit NUBAN.
• As you type, Tenantify queries Paystack and displays the account holder name. Confirm it matches the estate’s registered name.

If everything checks out, click Create subaccount. Paystack issues a dedicated subaccount in your fund’s name; every resident contribution will flow into it. Tenantify keeps a 3% platform fee on each transaction, paid by the resident on top of the contribution.

5. Invite the founding residents

You can start with a single resident or upload a bulk batch. Add one row per resident with Name, Email, Phone, and Unit. The unit field matches one of the units you created in phase 3.

Click Send invitations. Each resident receives an email with their own acceptance link. You can always come back to /fund/residents later to add more, edit details, or resend invitations that bounce.

6. Set the contribution plan

The final phase defines the default plan that applies to every resident unless you override it per resident later:

• Amount. The contribution figure in Naira.
• Frequency. Monthly, quarterly, or annually.
• Payment day. Day of the month residents are charged (1–28; the 5th is the most common).
• Grace period. Days after the due date before a resident counts as defaulting (0–60).

Click Activate fund. The fund flips to ACTIVE, payment schedules are generated for every accepted resident, and you are taken to the main /fund dashboard.

What happens next

• Residents who have already accepted their invite see their first contribution schedule the moment the fund activates.
• Pending residents see it the moment they accept their invitation.
• The first reminder email lands three days before each resident’s first scheduled payment.

If something goes wrong

Invitation link says “expired” or “invalid”. The invite has a fixed validity window. Email the Tenantify admin who invited you and request a resend.

Bank account verification fails. Most often the NUBAN belongs to a different bank than you picked, or the account name does not match exactly. Re-check the bank from your statement; spaces, punctuation, and middle names all matter to Paystack.

Subaccount creation succeeds but the dashboard says “PENDING”. Paystack runs its own compliance check on new subaccounts. Status usually clears within one business day. The fund cannot collect payments while pending, but you can keep building the resident roster.

A resident invite bounced. Check /fund/residents for a red Email bounce badge. The most common cause is a typo. Click the pencil icon, fix the email, and click Resend invitation.

I cannot find the “Activate fund” button. All five prior phases must complete before activation appears. Look for a phase still showing “Incomplete” in the wizard progress bar.

What’s next

Most managers go straight to Adding Residents to extend the roster beyond the founding batch. After that, Configuring Allocations covers per-resident overrides for residents on special arrangements.