Everything you need to know about managing rental properties with RentBook ZM.
RentBook ZM is a rental management platform built for Zambian landlords. It lets you issue provisional invoices, record mobile-money and bank payments, generate ZRA-compliant rent books, and keep a clean audit trail for each tenant — all without spreadsheets. It works whether you manage one unit or a portfolio across multiple properties.
Sign-up is open to any Zambian landlord. Click Sign up in the header, enter your name, email, and a password, and you can start using the app immediately with a 30-day free trial — no payment card required. If we have sent you a personal invitation, the link is valid for three days and pre-fills some setup details so you can get going faster. Either way, there is no setup fee.
Yes. The app is fully responsive and designed to work on phones and tablets as well as desktop. All core features — issuing invoices, recording payments, viewing leases, and downloading statements — are accessible from a mobile browser with no app download required.
Every new account starts with a 30-day free trial that includes full Pro-level features — no payment card required. During the trial there is a soft cap of 8 ZRA fiscal submissions, which is more than enough to validate the workflow end-to-end. At the end of the trial, you can upgrade to a paid plan (Pro or Business, billed annually) by contacting us. If you don't upgrade, your account moves to read-only for 90 days so you can still log in, export, and download your records before the lifecycle process completes. See the pricing section on the home page for indicative plan pricing.
A provisional invoice is a billing document sent to the tenant before payment — it states what is owed, for which period, and by when. This is the terminology used by the ZRA Smart Invoice portal and is the standard practice in Zambian residential letting. It gives the tenant a formal payment reference. Once payment is received, RentBook ZM records it against the provisional invoice and generates the final fiscalised receipt (Smart Invoice) for ZRA compliance.
A Smart Invoice is a ZRA-fiscalised receipt — a tax invoice carrying ZRA's electronic signature, SDC ID, and verification QR code. ZRA requires every VAT-registered business and every landlord above the rental-income threshold to issue Smart Invoices. RentBook ZM generates them automatically as soon as you record a payment — you do not need a separate fiscal device or desktop client. The submission goes through FiscalEdge Solutions, a ZRA-approved VSDC (Virtual Sales Data Controller) integration partner. Before we can submit on your behalf you must first register your business for the VSDC option on the ZRA Smart Invoice Portal — see the next FAQ. If you are not yet registered, the provisional invoice still serves as your billing record in the meantime. See our ZRA rental tax guide for more detail.
ZRA issues Smart Invoice credentials directly to the taxpayer — we cannot apply on your behalf. The one-time setup runs:
Register your business with ZRA — make sure you have a valid TPIN (and a VAT number if VAT-registered).
Log in to the ZRA Smart Invoice Portal and apply for Smart Invoice. ZRA offers four options:
Online / Web Portal — manual entry on ZRA's site
Desktop Client — ZRA's offline application
Mobile App — ZRA's mobile invoicing app
VSDC (Virtual Sales Data Controller) — API integration for third-party software like RentBook ZM
Choose VSDC. ZRA will issue you a TaxpayerID and a device key.
Share those credentials with our team (via the Help page contact form or your account manager). We configure them inside RentBook ZM and FiscalEdge, then run a sandbox test on your account.
Done. Every payment you record from then on is fiscalised automatically — FiscalEdge signs and submits each invoice to ZRA's VSDC API, and the returned SDC ID + receipt signature + QR code are attached to your PDFs and visible on each invoice page.
You stay the taxpayer of record throughout; RentBook ZM is the software submitting on your behalf via an approved integration partner.
Yes. When you create a lease, tick Mark as test lease. Invoices and payments on a test lease are excluded from ZRA submission, from your dashboard totals, and from your trial fiscalisation cap — so you can practise the full workflow (issue invoice, send to tenant, record payment, view receipt, download PDF) without anything reaching ZRA. Test leases are clearly badged throughout the app so they cannot be mistaken for real records. When you are ready, create a normal (untagged) lease and your real submissions begin.
Yes. Leases can be denominated in ZMW or USD. Invoices and rent books reflect the currency of the lease. Payments can also be recorded in the lease currency, so your records stay consistent without manual conversion. Note that ZRA Smart Invoices are always expressed in ZMW at the prevailing Bank of Zambia rate; RentBook ZM handles that conversion automatically.
Yes. Open any invoice and click Send to tenant. RentBook ZM emails the tenant a PDF copy of the provisional invoice with your payment details included. Once a payment is recorded and fiscalised, you can also send the ZRA-stamped receipt to the tenant the same way.
Yes. RentBook ZM provides several export options: invoices and payments can be downloaded as CSV from the Reports section, monthly financial statements export as PDF from the Money section, and a full account data export is available under your profile settings. All exports are generated on demand with no data held back.
After signing up, go to Guides → New tenancy in the sidebar. The step-by-step wizard walks you through creating your property and unit, adding your tenant, and setting up a lease — typically under five minutes for a first unit. Once the lease is active you can issue your first provisional invoice immediately.
Yes. RentBook ZM supports multiple properties, each with multiple units, under a single landlord account. Each unit has its own lease, invoice series, and payment history. The dashboard gives you a combined view of outstanding balances and recent activity across your entire portfolio.
RentBook ZM keeps an immutable record of every invoice issued and payment received, with timestamps and document numbers that satisfy ZRA audit requirements. For registered landlords, it generates ZRA Smart Invoices (fiscal receipts) through the FiscalEdge integration. The built-in rent book report follows the ZRA prescribed format for rental income disclosure. Our tax guide explains the Zambian rental tax rules in plain language.
RentBook ZM queues the Smart Invoice request and retries automatically. Your provisional invoice and payment record are always saved locally and remain valid in the meantime. You can view the submission status on the invoice page — any rejection reason from ZRA is displayed there so you can correct and resubmit. No data is lost if FiscalEdge is temporarily unreachable.
Yes. Once a payment has been fiscalised and accepted by ZRA, the original receipt cannot be deleted — but you can reverse it. RentBook ZM supports two kinds of credit note: an invoice credit note, which reverses the entire invoice (use this when the whole bill was wrong or raised in error), and a per-payment credit note, which reverses a single fiscalised payment while leaving the rest of the invoice intact (use this when the amount was wrong, the wrong tenant was credited, or a duplicate payment slipped through). Both are submitted to ZRA as fiscal reversals with their own SDC ID and QR code, and the audit trail records who issued them and why.
Your data is stored on servers hosted within a Tier-3 data centre and is encrypted in transit (TLS) and at rest. Each landlord account is completely isolated — you can only see your own properties, tenants, and transactions. We do not sell or share your data with third parties. For full details see our Privacy Policy.