Questions chairs ask us

Most estates are live within 2-3 business days of application approval. The bulk of that time is your EXCO deciding on fee structures and adding initial households. Onboarding pace is set by your estate, not by us.

At minimum: the chair (to approve invitations) and the treasurer (to define fees and validate the financial workflows). Most estates also include the secretary for member-list management.

MyEstates uses role separation that mirrors how Nigerian EXCOs actually work — each person sees and approves what their role implies.

There's no automated import in v1, but most estates start fresh — invoicing the current cycle going forward rather than backfilling history. If you have specific records you'd like preserved, we can discuss approaches case-by-case for Premier-tier estates.

MyEstates assumes an existing chair, treasurer, and secretary structure. If your estate is still organising itself, we'd suggest sorting out who holds which role before onboarding — both for governance reasons and because the platform's permissions are anchored on those roles.

No. The platform fee on each collection — 5% with a ₦300 minimum and ₦7,500 maximum — is the only fee MyEstates charges. There's no per-resident subscription, no setup fee, no per-feature unlock.

Paystack's own transaction processing is bundled into this fee; residents don't see a separate Paystack charge.

The estate pays. The platform fee is deducted from collected funds before the estate sees the balance. Your residents pay only their invoiced amount.

Overpayments are tracked and visible on the household statement. The platform doesn't currently process automatic refunds — your treasurer can record refunds manually with an audit trail, or apply the overpayment to the next invoice.

Yes. Your treasurer can manually record cash and bank-transfer payments, and they flow into the same household statement as Paystack payments. Cash payments don't generate platform fees — only Paystack-processed payments do.

Estate funds flow through Paystack's bank-grade payment rails. MyEstates never holds your money — collected funds settle directly to your estate's registered bank account through Paystack's normal settlement process.

We're not a custodian; we're a software platform that orchestrates invoicing and reconciliation around Paystack's payment infrastructure.

Your data belongs to your estate. If MyEstates ceases operations, your estate retains a full record of every invoice and payment, exportable on demand.

See ‘Your Data Is Yours’ for the full data ownership story.

No. Each estate's data is isolated by Row-Level Security policies enforced at the database layer — not just by application code. One estate cannot see another estate's invoices, payments, or members, even if there were a bug in the application.

Within your estate, role separation controls what each EXCO member can see and do.

Every EXCO account is protected by time-based 2FA (the same standard as major banking apps). A compromised password alone isn't enough. Recovery codes are issued at account setup for the case where a 2FA device is lost. Suspect activity should be reported to us immediately for account freeze and audit-log review.

In v1, accounts are scoped to a single estate. Multi-estate management (one person operating across several estates with separated permissions) is on the roadmap and worth discussing for Premier-tier engagements involving property managers.

You can export full invoice and payment history as CSV for AGM presentations, accountant review, or external audit.

Each household's statement is also exportable and printable as a clean PDF-style record — useful for any resident who requests a hard-copy view.

Residents can pay through Paystack via card, bank transfer, USSD, or POS — Paystack supports payment methods that don't require smartphones. For residents who prefer cash, your treasurer can record cash payments manually; they flow into the same statement.

All records — invoices, payments, audit trail, household history — carry through across EXCO changes. Outgoing chairs and treasurers can hand over without reconstructing anything; incoming members inherit a complete operational history.

This continuity is exactly what MyEstates was built for. Two years from now, the next chair shouldn't have to reconstruct your records from a WhatsApp group.