How builders can track demand letters and collections

For a builder, the booking is not the end of the sale. On most under-construction projects, the money arrives in stages over months or years. Every stage needs a demand letter, a payment, a receipt and a record. When that lives in separate sheets owned by different people, payments slip — not because buyers refuse, but because nobody noticed they were due.

This guide explains what to track, how to read it, and a simple weekly routine.

The basics: schedule, demand, receipt

• Payment schedule: the plan agreed at booking — for example, a booking amount, an amount on agreement, and instalments linked to construction milestones up to possession.
• Demand letter: the formal request for the next instalment, raised when a milestone is reached, with the amount and due date.
• Receipt: the record of what the buyer actually paid, when, and how.

Set schedules according to your agreement for sale and the rules that apply to your project. The tracking below works whatever the schedule looks like.

What to track for every flat

For each booked flat, keep one record with:

• Buyer name, phone number and flat number.
• The payment schedule.
• Each demand raised — amount, date raised and due date.
• Each payment received — amount, date, mode and reference.
• What is still outstanding, and whether any of it is overdue.
• The status of the booking — active or cancelled.

Put together, this is the buyer’s ledger: a running list of what was demanded and what was paid. If you can open any buyer’s ledger in a few seconds, you are in control.

Four numbers every builder should know

1. Amount raised: the total of all demands issued so far.
2. Amount received: the total actually paid against them.
3. Outstanding: raised minus received.
4. Overdue: the part of outstanding that is past its due date.

Outstanding is not bad by itself — a demand raised yesterday is naturally outstanding. Overdue is the number that needs action.

Use aging to decide who to call first

Aging groups what is due by how long it has been waiting: due today, 1–7 days, 8–30 days, and more than 30 days. It tells you where to spend effort. A payment a few days late usually needs a polite reminder. One that is months late needs a conversation with someone senior.

Decide your own rules for when things are due — for example, how many days after agreement the agreement amount is due, and how many days after a demand letter each instalment is due — and apply them the same way to every buyer.

Reconcile payments against demands

Reconciliation means matching every payment to the demand it pays. It sounds simple until buyers pay in parts, pay two demands together, or a home-loan disbursement arrives from the bank separately from the buyer’s own share. Record each payment with its reference and link it to the right demand. Do it as payments arrive, not at the end of the quarter.

Leave cancelled flats out of the totals

When a booking is cancelled, its old demands should not keep inflating your outstanding amount. Keep the history — you may need it for refunds or disputes — but exclude cancelled flats from collection totals. Otherwise your overdue figure is wrong, and a wrong number is soon ignored.

Remind before the due date, not after

A short, polite reminder a few days before a payment is due usually works better than a chase afterwards. Decide who sends reminders, when, and in what tone. Keep a note of every reminder and every promise to pay — “will pay after the loan disbursement next week” is useful information for the next call.

A weekly collections review

Once a week, answer these questions for each project:

• How much was raised, received and is outstanding?
• What is overdue, and in which aging bucket?
• Which buyers have been overdue for more than 30 days, and what did they last say?
• Which milestones are coming up, and are the demand letters ready?

Let buyers see their own ledger

Many “how much do I still owe?” calls come from buyers who simply can’t see their account. A buyer who can see their payment schedule, demand letters and payments made does not need to call your office to ask — and disputes are easier to settle when both sides look at the same record.

How Realty Desk helps

Realty Desk keeps demand letters per buyer and flat — synced from your Google Sheet or entered directly — with payment schedules, amount raised against received, outstanding and overdue, aging with your own due-day rules, reconciliation and each buyer’s ledger. Cancelled flats are excluded from totals. Payment reminders are queued automatically; sending them over WhatsApp comes with WhatsApp automation, which is coming next. Buyers can see their schedule, ledger and demand letters in the customer portal.

Read more about demand & collections and the customer portal.