I built a residential management system to fix manual estate management in Nigeria
Source: Dev.to
The Problem – How serving as a financial secretary exposed a broken process – and led me to build RCMS
A few years ago I wasn’t trying to build a startup. I was serving as the Financial Secretary in the residential estate where I lived, and my biggest daily problem was keeping up with manual records—tracking dues (both current & outstanding), updating arrears, issuing receipts, and answering constant calls from residents asking about their payment status.
We relied on spreadsheets, WhatsApp messages, and paper receipts. Even when I tried to “improve things” with Excel, the stress didn’t go away.
When I later moved to another estate and saw the exact same problems, it became clear this wasn’t just a local inconvenience—it was a systemic issue. That experience eventually led me to build RCMS (Residential Community Management System).
TL;DR
While serving as a financial secretary in a residential estate, I experienced firsthand how manual estate management—spreadsheets, WhatsApp groups, and paper records—leads to confusion, disputes, and inefficiency. After seeing the same problems across multiple communities, I built RCMS to digitize resident records, payments, receipts, reporting, and visitor management in a single platform, eliminating spreadsheets and bringing transparency to estate management.
The Solution – How I Built RCMS and What It Does
Development Approach
- Defined the overall system blueprint (architecture, core workflows, data models, feature boundaries).
- Leveraged my background as a Cloud Solutions Architect (AWS) to design a production‑ready system.
- Used Replit’s AI agent as a development assistant for scaffolding, boilerplate generation, and rapid iteration. The AI accelerated repetitive tasks while I retained control over what was built and how it fit the domain.
- The project took roughly 12 months of building, testing, and iteration before reaching a stable production release. Most of that time was spent validating community‑management workflows, handling edge cases, and ensuring predictable real‑world behavior.
AI helped with speed, but the hard parts—understanding the domain, modeling estate operations, handling edge cases, and designing for transparency and accountability—required human judgment.
Key Features
- Automated dues calculation with accurate capture of arrears & outstanding dues.
- Auto‑generated and emailed digital receipts.
- Secure storage of resident records and payment history.
- Transparent financial reports generation.
- Visitor and vendor tracking using digital access codes.
In simple terms: a smarter, structured, and transparent way to manage residential communities.
Tech Stack & Architecture
Frontend
- React 18 + TypeScript
Backend API
- Node.js 20 (Express)
Database
- PostgreSQL (relational model for financial accuracy and auditability)
ORM
- Drizzle ORM
Authentication & Authorization
- Role‑based access control (admin, financial secretary, treasurer, secretary)
- Transactional email for onboarding, receipts, and notifications
Hosting
- Cloud‑based deployment, designed with AWS‑compatible architecture in mind
Key Architectural Decisions
- Conservative financial data modeling to avoid ambiguity in dues, arrears, and receipts.
- Explicit role boundaries to prevent privilege leaks, especially around payments and expense approvals.
- Modular feature design allowing estates to adopt RCMS incrementally.
- Optimization for environments with inconsistent connectivity.
- Multi‑tenant architecture to safely accommodate multiple communities.
The emphasis was on reliability, clarity, and scalability rather than over‑engineering—mirroring how estates actually operate with clear records, traceability, and accountability.
See RCMS in Action
- Product page:
- YouTube walkthrough:
Feel free to reach out with questions or to discuss real‑world use cases.