Taking two student lodges from paperwork to a complete online platform
A tenancy platform covering the public website, tenant portal, admin approvals, payments and receipts for the Glorious and Praises student lodges.
- Client
- Glorious & Praises
- Sector
- Student housing
- Services
- Product design, full-stack engineering, payments
- Year
- 2026
What needed solving
Running two lodges means tracking applications, room availability, tenancy agreements, rent and receipts across caretakers and the landlord, often through phone calls and bank-transfer screenshots.
The goal was one system where students could apply and pay online, staff could see every pending decision in one place, and every payment produced a proper receipt.
The solution
Public website
Lodge pages, live room availability, search and filters, gallery, FAQ and staff-managed announcements.
Tenant portal
Registration, applications, tenancy agreements, rent status and payment history with downloadable PDF receipts.
Approval Centre
Every pending decision in one queue with live counts: payment checks, applications, landlord approvals and rent proofs.
Room occupancy map
A block-by-block view of every room across both lodges, from Glorious A1 to D13 and Praises A1 to D7.
Payments
Paystack checkout with server-side verification and webhooks, plus a caretaker-then-landlord flow for bank transfers.
Automation
Numbered PDF receipts on every verified payment and a daily rent-reminder job.
How the system fits together
A simplified view of the main components and how requests move between them.
- Next.js web appPublic site, tenant portal, admin portal
- Express APIWorkflow rules, httpOnly JWT sessions, rate limitingSchedulerDaily rent reminders
- MongoDBTenants, rooms, applications, paymentsPaystackCheckout, verification, webhooksEmail (SMTP)Verification, receipts, reminders
Choices that made the difference
The workflow lives in the API, not the interface
Every application has a derived stage and an approval trail, and the API refuses any step taken out of order. The rules hold even if someone bypasses the web app.
Two-step payment verification
Bank transfers are approved by a caretaker and then verified by the landlord, so no single person can mark rent as paid.
Receipts are generated, never typed
A numbered PDF receipt is created automatically for every verified payment, which gives tenants and the landlord the same record.
Critical journeys are tested end to end
Twenty-two Playwright suites cover applications, approvals, payments, agreements, co-tenants and admin operations, so releases do not break the paths that matter most.
The platform is live at gloriouspraises.com. Applications, approvals, payments and receipts for both lodges now run through one system, with email-verified accounts and staff multi-factor authentication.
Technology
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