Today, we are excited to bring you ApnaComplex for Android.

For the first time, Housing Societies and Apartment Complexes in India can take advantage of the Smart Phones to manage their affairs.

In this first version of ApnaComplex for Android, all our customers having a member account in ApnaComplex can login via the native Andriod app on their mobile and access Complaint Box and Financial Statement on the go.

With ApnaComplex for Android, Users can log new complaints on the go – as and when they notice an issue. There is no need to remember the issue, come back to the desk, login and raise. Once logged, the complaint will follow the usual assignment and escalation process – just like when a complaint is logged via web portal. Users can also view open complaints and the updates on the complaint. Users can also add more notes to the complaint.

Users can also check the outstanding balance and detailed financial statement using ApnaComplex for Android.

We have worked hard to frog leap Apartment Management and Society Accounting into the smart phone generation – look forward to see you using ApnaComplex for Android and hearing your feedback. Enjoy and wait for rapid addition of more and more features on the smart phone!

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Want to get smart in your housing society management? – Get on to ApnaComplex – Today!

ApnaComplex is India’s most comprehensive web based housing society accounting, management and communication software. It is designed to make the life of residents and owners way lot better by bringing in more transparency and accountability in managing a housing society. Check out the features of ApnaComplex and sign up your society today to get the benefits! We offer a free 30-day trial as well so that you can try before you buy!

Citilights Rustique, an apartment complex in Whitefield, Bangalore has selected ApnaComplex quite sometime back after thorough evaluation of other portals. Today we received a great testimonial from Mr. Prasad, Treasurer of Citilights Rustique Apartments Owners Welfare Association . Happy to share the same below:

We at Rustique have been using ApnaComplex for a while now. It is definitely the best portal based on our evaluations with other similar portals. It helps in managing various day to day activities of a typical association.

The accounting module is the best and robust one, it is very simple to use, this helped us in not only in managing the accounting but also made things transparent.

The support provided by ApnaComplex team is always lightening fast. We are very happy with our over all experience with ApnaComplex .
Prasad
CRAOWA Treasurer

Thank you Mr. Prasad for your words!! We are so happy to receive these words from you!

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Want to ease your (or your treasurer’s) burden? – Get on to ApnaComplex – Today!

ApnaComplex is India’s most comprehensive web based housing society accounting, management and communication software. It is designed to make the life of residents and owners way lot better by bringing in more transparency and accountability in managing a housing society. Check out the features of ApnaComplex and sign up your society today to get the benefits! We offer a free 30-day trial as well so that you can try before you buy!

Members and Staff of your complex can now send just send an SMS to start receiving SMS sent by ApnaComplex

From the mobile number that needs to be opted in send “Apna SMS START” to 9243000111 as an sms.

You would get a confirmation message back stating “Your message is received by ApnaComplex.com and will be processed in 24-48hours”.

Once sent the mobile number should be enabled to receive SMSs with in 24-48 hours, if the number is listed as a mobile number in ApnaComplex against a member or staff.

You can use the same facility to opt-out as well by sending Apna SMS STOP to 9243000111.

Now you can group your inventory items under various categories. Go to Directory->Inventory->Manage Categories to get started. We have migrated all existing inventory items to a “General” category – whcih you can modify per your needs.

Your favorite portal now supports sending important SMS to any mobile number – including those present in the DND list. Also, gone are the time restrictions when you can receive an SMS. No more 9AM-9PM restrictions.

Types of Messages:
Going forward you have two “types” of messages you can send through ApnaComplex

Template Based SMS
Non-template Based SMS
Template based SMS – as the name indicates – are pre-defined messages with some placeholders. You will have option to fill these place holders and send to members. These message formats are pre-defined – they are already scrutinized and approved by relevant authorities. Hence, they will reach all members – including those in DND and at any time. All system generated messages such as Meeting Reminders, Complaint Escalations, Invoice/Payment notifications etc. will all fall under this category.

Non-template based SMS – as the name indicates – these messages have no restrictions on the text. It is free text and one can type any thing. However, these will have restrictions that they cannot reach all members. These messages will only reach people who are not on the DND and that too only from 9 AM to 9 PM.

Explicit Opt-in to receive SMS:
As per TRAI regulations, it is mandatory for ApnaComplex to maintain the records of the approval given by a member to receive SMS before we attempt to send an SMS. Hence, every member has to login to ApnaComplex and update their SMS opt-in preference before being able to receive template based SMSs. Members who have not opted in, will get an alert as soon as they login. It is very simple to update the preference – got to Home->My Profile->Edit Profile, select “Yes” for SMS Opt-in and update.

With our smart routing logic, we attempt to send a message scheduled by you in multiple channels to ensure the member receives it – we fist deliver a template based SMS to all members who have opted for receiving SMS. Next, we try and deliver SMS through another channel for all the members who have not updated thier opt-in preference – these members would get the SMS in case they are not on DND list.

We are happy to announce the launch of a new ApnaComplex Classifieds Section for our members to post their needs and reach out to wider audience. You can access the classifieds section at https://www.apnacomplex.com/classifieds.

ApnaComplex Classifieds will replace the earlier mechanism of posting notices with “Every one on internet” visibility. With this feature, admins need not be spending time approving buy/sell/rent type of notices from members and keep the noticeboard clean. ApnaComplex Classifieds is also tightly integrated with Facebook for members who want to post these classifieds to a wider audience in their respective networks.

We are happy to announce a key new addition to ApnaComplex feature set – ‘Automated Scheduled Reports’ – that is available for every society.

With this feature, any one in your society can now receive various reports by email at a pre-defined and periodic intervals (OneTime, Daily, Weekly, Monthly).
You can schedule reports to be sent to entire community/owners/committee/sub groups or to a selected set of individuals.

Some of the “new” things you can do in your society with this feature:
1. Improve Financial Transparency by auto-publishing Income/Expense statement to all owners every month!
2. Schedule to send List of all expense details for the week to the entire committee!
3. Get End of the day cash/bank balances on a daily basis!
4. Automatically send updated key contact list once a month to entire community!
5. Get Bouncing email ID report once a week!
and much more… All just by configuring for few minutes.

There are around 40+ reports available for scheduling. As always, the list will continue to grow as we move forward.

To start using this feature, go to Reports->Reports List and click the ‘Scheduled Reports’ button.

Please note that the system shall execute and send reports post mid-night every day.

Background: Housing Societies and need for Payment Gateway

Housing societies, welfare associations and folks managing multi-tenancy buildings/ complexes keep collecting recurring dues from the members. Members usually pay their dues through Cheques, and these days transfer money through NEFT to the Society Bank Account. Non-resident owners also use one of these modes to pay their dues. However, keeping of track of payments from several members, validating the bank transfers, accurately issuing receipts is a big issue for the treasurers and accountants and the amount of money that lies in “Suspense” account head keeps increasing as mapping the payment received to the correct flat is quite time consuming. This triggers a chain of issues – complaints from members of not getting receipts, unable to accurately impose late payment charges properly, accurate defaulters reports and so on.

Advantages of an Online payment system where members can pay their maintenance dues and get an instant receipt from the are now obvious – in addition to getting money securely into the bank, treasurers/accountants can heave a sigh of relief due to tremendous savings in the reconciliation efforts and other issues mentioned earlier!

As everyone is aware – ApnaComplex offers a Payment Gateway module using which members of Housing Societies can pay their dues online and avoid all the reconciliation problems mentioned above.

A word of caution: Integrating with Payment Gateways and offering such a solution needs to be thorough, requires lots of due diligence to ensure safety of the money and comply with all relevant regulations. There have been providers in the market offering solutions for Housing Societies that were not fully legally compliant and were forced to change their solution. This has created a dent in the confidence of Housing Societies to go fully online. With the vast industry experience the founding team brings to the table, trust ApnaComplex to not offer services hastily without appropriate due diligence.

The online payment gateway platform offered by ApnaComplex is a reputed Payment Gateway operating in India since past 7 years and is complliant with PCI, ISO 27001 & RBI norms, whereby funds are settled directly to existing bank account of the society, via trusted banks in India for your society’s members to transact online with confidence.

Here is the detailed explanation on the online payment gateway integration in ApnaComplex.com that can clarify various questions we keep receiving from our prospects and customers. ApnaComplex is an alliance partner for one of the leading payment gateways in India who enables the online payment platform for Housing Societies.

Enabling Payment Gateway for a Society

As a first step, like any other business that collects money, the Housing Society or the RWA which is going to collect the funds electronically shall be setup with the Payment Gateway as a “Biller” (also referred as Merchant in Online Payments terminology). For this, the Society / RWA has to submit legal documentation related to AGM resolution authorizing the association to be a biller and other KYC documents. Once verification and scrutiny of the documents is done, the Payment Gateway shall register the Society/RWA as a ‘Biller/Merchant’. This entire process is co-ordinated by ApnaComplex.com with the society. Upon successful verification and merchant registration, merchant details are provided to the society by the Payment Gateway. The same merchant details shall be updated in the ApnaComplex portal, and the online payment facility is turned on for the society’s portal hosted on ApnaComplex.

Making a payment using Payment Gateway

• A members logs into ApnaComplex.com and selects to make a payment using Payment Gateway.
• ApnaComplex redirects the user to Payment Gateway along with the Merchant details of that society.
• Member enters amount to be paid, and other credit card / net-banking details on the Payment Gateways’ pages and completes the transaction
• The funds flow from the members account/credit card to the account of the Payment Gateway. This is an RBI monitored bank account.
• Upon successful payment, the payment gateway redirects the member to ApnaComplex portal’s payment confirmation screen along with the amount paid
• ApnaComplex mails a PDF receipt to the member and also updates the member’s ledgers and other accounts to reflect the payment
• The payment gateway transfers the money to Society’s Bank Account directly.
• It is important to note that the money paid by member NEVER comes to an account which is related to ApnaComplex.com in any way. The funds flow from the Member’s Account to the Society’s Bank Account using RBI approved and monitored channels – thus making this a fully legally compliant mechanism for making online payments.

Other options we had

Another way of offering the payment gateway to housing societies would have been to become payment aggregator ourselves. We have decided against that as that would deviate us from our core business and made us a electronic payments organization. Instead, we chose to partner with a well established and respected payment gateway player as it offers the following advantages:

• Proven Technology Stack – No need to Re-invent the Wheel: The complete technology stack that processes your funds is used by thousands and thousands of merchants daily (including some of the leading e-commerce sites in India) and is owned by an organization which provides payment gateway functionality in around 50 countries around the world.
• Fraud Detection: The complete system of managing the funds and getting them transferred is done by a leader in this area with sophisticated tools for fraud detection and risk management.
• Easy Compliance: As the payment gateway is one of the leaders in the space, they keep their systems updated as per RBI guidelines that can change from time to time.
• No Additional Benefit: There is no additional benefit that we can offer to our customers by we becoming a payment aggregator ourselves. Instead that exposes them to greater risk due of non-complaince and fraud due as mentioned in earlier points.

We have always valued legal compliance over business and are glad that we are providing the users of ApnaComplex.com an effective, compliant and with leading edge technology. If you have more questions, please feel free to Contact Us with your queries.