A fast-growing firm with no system to match its scale
Client
GIMCOAFRICA LIMITED
www.gimcoafrica.co.tz
Industry
Real Estate Management
Location
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Timeline
12 - 16 Weeks
The Challenge
GIMCOAFRICA is a leading property management firm based in Dar es Salaam, managing a growing portfolio of residential and commercial buildings across Tanzania on behalf of private and government landlords.
As the portfolio expanded, the cracks in their manual processes began to show rent tracking across dozens of units was done in spreadsheets, landlords had no visibility into their properties, utility billing was error-prone, and there was no audit trail for maintenance work.
They needed a single, integrated platform built specifically for Tanzanian real estate operations including local tax compliance, multi-currency billing, and government landlord disbursement workflows.
No single source of truth for properties, contracts, and invoices data scattered across spreadsheets and email threads
Landlords had zero visibility into their buildings, rent collection, or maintenance activity
Utility bill generation was manual and error-prone, with no automated TANESCO/generator meter tracking
Property managers had access to all records no way to scope visibility to only their assigned buildings
What We Built
We designed and developed a production-grade custom module Property management deployed on Odoo 19 Enterprise. Every feature was purpose-built for GIMCOAFRICA's workflows, from landlord disbursement accounting to live OWL dashboards and a tenant-facing portal. No generic templates. No off-the-shelf compromise.
- Live OWL Dashboard - A real-time management dashboard built with Odoo's OWL framework. KPI cards for properties, active contracts, monthly revenue, outstanding invoices, maintenance status, and utility billing all updating live with clickable drill-down navigation.
- Landlord Self-Service Portal - the system shows different buttons based on fruit quality: fresh fruit goes to ripening, ripe goes to sorting, rotten is fast-tracked
- Property Manager Access Control - A scoped security model where each property manager is assigned to specific buildings. Record rules automatically filter every view properties, contracts, invoices, utility bills so managers only ever see their own assigned portfolio.
- Rent Pass-Through Accounting - For government-landlord contracts, rent flows through GIMCO's books before disbursement. The system automatically splits each invoice into two lines: rent to a suspense liability account and the GIMCO service charge to an income account, with GePG control number support.
- Tanzania Tax Compliance - Built-in support for TRA withholding tax (Section 82) on rental income, TIN/VRN fields on all counterparty records, GePG control number fields for utility and rent payments, and multi-currency billing in both TZS and USD.
- Maintenance Cost Tracking - Full maintenance lifecycle management linked directly to properties. Actual costs logged per maintenance request, with aggregate cost totals per building and unit. A pivot cost report breaks down spend by property, stage, and period for budgeting.
"A single platform that finally brings together our entire portfolio buildings, tenants, landlords, invoices, and maintenance the way property management in Tanzania actually works."
Issa Sultan- GIMCOAFRICA ICT OFFICER
Insights, stats, and metrics
This section allows to highlight key statistics.
24/7
Landlord portfolio visibility
100%
TRA tax compliance automated
0
Spreadsheets In Active Use
Odoo Modules Integrated
The system isn't standalone it connects with 8 standard Odoo modules so every department works from one platform:
The system isn't standalone it connects with 11 standard Odoo modules so every department works from one platform:
Maintenance. Purchase. CRM&Sales. Human Resource. Accounting. WhatsApp. Website_Portal. Contacts
The custom property management module was designed to integrate natively with eleven Odoo core modules extending their models, inheriting their views, and tying into their security and workflow engines rather than duplicating them