Property management in Oman: the cheque, the owner's money, and the rial

01What does it cover for a managing agent?

• A register of buildings, units and areas, with the owner behind each one
• Leases with their terms, deposit, cheques and renewal — and a termination that settles the period already started and returns the later cheques
• Rent collection, including collecting a batch of post-dated cheques at once
• Cheques through their whole life: deposited, collected, bounced, replaced
• Maintenance requests with vendors: approval, assignment, actual cost and the bill
• Owner settlements: what was collected, what was spent, the management fee, and what is payable to the owner
• Owner statements, the return per property, and vacancy
• VAT applied by the kind of charge — rent, utilities and the rest, each decided on its own, with a contract able to differ
• Unit brochures and catalogues as PDF, sent to a client as a secure link, by WhatsApp or email

02How are post-dated cheques handled?

In the Gulf a year's rent usually arrives as four or twelve cheques on the day the lease is signed, and most of the work is what happens to them afterwards. In Revora a cheque is a record, not a line in a note:

• The lease's cheques are entered once and collected as a batch when their dates come round, rather than one by one
• Each cheque carries its state — deposited, collected, bounced, replaced — so a bounced cheque is a state with a history, not a deleted row
• A collection writes its accounting entry with it; the money and the record are one step, so a payment cannot exist without a record
• When a lease is terminated, the period that already started is settled and the cheques dated after it are returned

03How is the owner's money kept apart from the company's?

Money collected for an owner is held as owner-payable, not as company income. The management fee is taken as its own entry, and a payout to the owner moves the money and writes the accounting entry in one step.

That is what makes the owner statement defensible: what was collected, what was spent on his property, what the fee was, and what is due to him — each figure resting on records he can be shown, per property and per period.

04What about VAT?

VAT is applied by the kind of charge. Rent, utilities, the management fee and the rest are each decided on their own in the settings, and a particular contract can differ from the setting where it has to. VAT input and VAT output have their own accounts in the chart of accounts, and the VAT return can be printed.

The rates and the treatment are yours to set; we do not decide your tax position for you, and the system does not file anything on your behalf.

05Is it actually Arabic, and does it know the rial?

• Every screen works in Arabic and in English — the same screens, not an English system with a translated menu
• The currency belongs to the installation, so on an Oman installation the treasury balance, the receipt and the contract printout carry the rial rather than a default left over from somewhere else
• Documents that go to an owner or a tenant are produced in the language you send them in

06Can owners and tenants see anything themselves?

Yes. There are portals with their own sign-in, and a statement can also be sent as a link instead. Owner data is never shown on a brochure that goes to a client.

07Who is behind it, and how do I see it?

mbsystems, a software company founded in 2013 in Vienna, Austria, with offices in Vienna, Cairo and Muscat. We write Revora ourselves, which is why a change a customer needs is a change we make rather than a request to a foreign vendor.

Ask for a demonstration on your own buildings: info@mbsyss.com, or Muscat +968 7277 7269, Cairo +20 100 520 5900, Vienna +43 681 8411 0547. The price is given as a quote for your company.