Builder Instalment Management
Bookings, down payments and monthly qists with a defaulter list you can produce on demand — not one you dread compiling.
A builder selling apartments or shops on instalments is running a lending business whether or not anyone calls it that. Several hundred buyers, each on a payment plan, each a little ahead or behind, and the only number that matters at the end of every month is how much came in against how much was due. That number is usually unknown for a week after month end.
What gets built here sits tightly around the payment plan: booking, down payment, the monthly qist schedule, surcharge on late payment, receipts in sequence, and the defaulter position. The appeal is narrow and the payoff is immediate, because it replaces an arithmetic job that somebody is currently doing by hand every single month.
What it fixes
- Several payment plans running at once — a longer plan for early bookings, a shorter one later, plus individually rescheduled buyers — with no way to see them against one schedule
- Instalments received in cash, by cheque and by bank transfer, reconciled late, so a buyer who has paid is chased and a buyer who has not is not
- A defaulter list that takes two days to compile and is out of date by the time the meeting happens
- Late payment surcharge applied inconsistently, which is where most buyer arguments start
- Bookings cancelled or transferred to a new buyer, with the refund and deduction worked out from scratch each time
- No reliable forecast of what is due to come in next month, which is exactly the number construction planning needs
What gets built
A starting point, not a fixed list. The build is scoped to your own process before anything is written.
Unit and booking register
Every apartment, shop or plot in the project with floor, size, category and rate, marked available, booked, transferred or cancelled, and the buyer currently against it.
Payment plans
Plan templates — down payment, number of monthly qists, on-possession amount, any balloon instalment — applied per booking and adjustable for a buyer who has been rescheduled, with the original plan still visible.
Instalment schedule and receipts
What fell due and when, what was received against which instalment, part payments handled properly, and a numbered receipt the buyer keeps.
Surcharge on late payment
Your own rule applied the same way to everyone, calculated from the due date, and waivable only by a named person with the waiver recorded.
Defaulter and ageing reports
Who is behind, by how much and for how long, with the notice list for a given cut-off date — generated rather than assembled.
Cancellation and transfer
Booking cancelled with the deduction rule applied and the refund tracked, or transferred to a new buyer with the paid amount carried across and both names kept in the history.
Who this is for
Builders and developers selling units on instalments, from a single project of fifty units up to several projects running at once. It is most valuable where bookings have passed the point at which one person can hold the position in their head — usually somewhere past a hundred buyers. A builder who sells a completed building outright for cash does not need an instalment system at all. And if you are also managing construction cost, subcontractors and material against the same project, that is a separate build; combining the two is reasonable but it roughly doubles the scope and should be planned deliberately rather than added halfway.
Questions
Can buyers get an automatic reminder before the qist is due?
SMS or WhatsApp reminders are a sensible addition and they genuinely improve recovery. Both have a per-message cost and WhatsApp in particular requires a Business API account with templates approved in advance, so it is scoped and priced as an addition rather than assumed to be included.
Our payment plan changed between phases, and some buyers negotiated their own.
That is normal, and it is the main reason spreadsheets fail here. It should be designed in from the start: plan templates for the standard cases, and a per-booking override with the original plan still on record. Retrofitting individual plans into a system built for one standard plan is awkward and more expensive than allowing for it at the beginning.
Will this tell us our profit on the project?
Not on its own, and we would rather be clear about that. It tells you what has been sold and what has been recovered. Profit needs construction cost, land cost and overheads against the same project, which is a different build. If that is what you actually want, say so at scoping, because it changes the shape of the whole thing.
Tell us how your project runs.
We scope it first — what it takes, how long, what it costs. No obligation.