How to Use Nizam: A Complete Setup & Getting Started Guide

This guide walks through the whole journey of getting a complex running on Nizam — from the first signup screen to the day-to-day of collecting maintenance, chatting with residents, and paying vendors. If you're a committee member, treasurer, or property manager setting up a complex for the first time, read it straight through. If you're already set up and just need one section, jump to it from the table of contents on the right.

Step 1: Creating your complex

Sign up at app.nizamco.com and you'll be walked through a short setup wizard before you ever see the main app:

• Pick your complex type. Residential building, housing society, or commercial market — this determines the terminology and unit types you'll see throughout the rest of setup.
• Name your complex and enter its address. Your currency and country-specific terminology (for example "HOA" in the US, "Strata" in Australia, "Housing Society" in Pakistan) are detected automatically from this.
• Define sections if your complex has multiple blocks, towers, or phases — this is optional and can be skipped for a single-block complex.
• Choose what you collect — maintenance dues, rent (if you manage rental units on behalf of owners), and/or one-off additional collections.
• Define your unit subtypes — flat, villa, shop, or whatever categories fit your complex — and set a maintenance rate for each.
• Configure your billing cycle — due day, frequency, and any late-payment penalty.
• Add your units. Add them one at a time, or bulk-import your entire unit and resident list from a CSV file — occupant and owner details, phone numbers, national IDs, vehicles, floors, and sections all come in through the same import. A downloadable sample template shows the exact columns expected, and every row is validated before anything is saved.

None of this requires technical knowledge — the whole wizard takes most people 15–20 minutes for a mid-sized complex, less if you're importing units from a spreadsheet you already have.

Step 2: What happens after you sign up

Once you finish setup, your complex doesn't go live instantly — it goes to the Nizam team for a quick review first. You'll see a review screen instead of your home screen, and here's exactly what that means:

• This is a one-time check, not a delay tactic. We're simply confirming the complex was set up correctly before residents start using it.
• It's usually fast. Review typically takes a few hours, and can take up to 24 hours in busier periods.
• We'll reach out to you — on WhatsApp, by call, or by email — once your complex is approved, or if we need anything from you first.
• You're never fully stuck. If you manage more than one complex and another one is already approved, you can switch to it and keep working while the new one is reviewed.

If your data is already clean and ready when you finish setup — units imported, billing configured — review moves faster on our side too. If you'd rather skip the self-service wizard altogether, our team can also do the entire setup for you at no cost; see Getting Help below for how to request that.

Step 3: Adding units and residents after you're live

Once approved, you'll add to your resident directory as people move in — either individually or in bulk:

• Add a unit manually with its subtype, floor, section, and occupant details — owner and tenant are tracked separately whenever a unit is rented out to someone other than its owner.
• Bulk-import more units later the same way you did during setup — useful when a whole new block or phase comes online.
• Residents add their own family members (up to 5 per unit) and register vehicles from their own portal — vehicle registrations go through an approval step so nothing lands on your parking list unreviewed.
• Handle move-in and move-out with a transfer/clearance certificate — it checks outstanding dues automatically, applies any transfer charges, and produces a downloadable PDF certificate.

Residents themselves sign up by invitation from you, set a PIN, and get instant access to their own portal on web or the Android app.

Step 4: Setting up billing and collections

Your billing cycle and rates were configured during the wizard, but this is where you'll manage it going forward:

• Bills generate automatically every cycle for every unit, based on the rates and due day you configured — no one has to remember to "run billing."
• Residents pay digitally and get an instant receipt, or you record a manual/bank-transfer payment on their behalf.
• Outstanding dues and defaulters show up on a real-time dashboard, with aging so you know exactly who's behind and by how long.
• One-off collections — a festival fund, a repair levy, a special assessment — are created and tracked separately from regular maintenance.
• Managing rentals? Rent bills run through the exact same billing engine, with rent owed to owners tracked in its own wallet, separate from resident credit, and settled to owners with one click. See the full rental management breakdown for the details.

For a deeper walkthrough of billing structures, cycles, and reminders specifically, read How to Set Up Monthly Maintenance Billing.

Step 5: Managing finance, bills, and payments

Underneath the day-to-day billing is a full accounting system, not just an invoice log:

• Real financial statements — Balance Sheet, Income Statement, General Ledger, Trial Balance, Cash Flow Statement, Journal Entries, Payables & Receivables Aging, and Bank Reconciliation — the same reports your accountant would ask for.
• Approval policies let you require sign-off from one or several committee members before a vendor invoice above a set amount is paid.
• Everything ties back to a ledger — every resident and every vendor has their own running account, so "what did we spend on X" or "what does unit 4B owe" is a lookup, not an investigation.

Step 6: Communicating with residents

Nizam replaces the unmanaged WhatsApp group most complexes already have, without losing what people actually use it for:

• Structured chat groups — Residents, Staff, Committee, Security, and Cleaners groups are created and kept in sync automatically as people join or leave, alongside custom groups anyone with permission can start.
• Announcements and push notifications — target everyone, a specific category, or a single unit, with drafts and scheduling for planned communication.
• Complaint management — residents file complaints by category with a photo or voice note, choose whether other residents can see it, and management triages each one as informational, converts it to a tracked work order, or links it to an existing issue as a duplicate.
• Emergency SOS alerts — a deliberate press-and-hold trigger notifies every admin and security staff instantly, with a Do-Not-Disturb-bypassing alert on their end.

Step 7: Managing staff, vendors, and work orders

Day-to-day operations run through the same platform residents use:

• Staff profiles, attendance, and payroll — including geolocation check-in/out, leave approval, and salary disbursement with a self-service payroll view for staff.
• A vendor directory with a self-service vendor portal, so vendors can see their own invoices and work orders without calling your office.
• Work orders flow directly from complaints or are created independently — assigned, quoted, tracked through status, and closed out with a full history.
• Visitor management — residents pre-approve expected guests from their phone, and a dedicated guard portal logs every walk-in with a photo at the gate.

Getting help

If you get stuck anywhere in this process — during setup, during review, or once you're live — reach out any time:

• WhatsApp: +92 336 8084755
• Email: [email protected]
• Help center: available in-app once you're logged in

And if you'd rather not do any of the setup above yourself, just ask — assisted onboarding is free, and if your unit and resident data is ready, we can typically have your complex fully set up and reviewed within a day or two.