Visitor management for gated estates in South Africa
The gate book, replaced by a code that expires.
Residents generate a one-time code and forward it to their visitor. The guard verifies it at the boom in seconds — even with no signal. Every entry is recorded, so the estate finally has an access trail worth reading.
- Single-use codes
- Six-hour expiry
- Works offline at the gate
A paper book at the boom is not access control.
It is a queue, an illegible name and a phone number nobody will ever call. When something goes wrong at three in the morning, the estate has a page of handwriting and no way to tell who actually came through.
Nobody verifies the name
A visitor writes anything they like. There is no link between the person at the boom and the resident they claim to be visiting.
Access never expires
A gate code shared once on a residents' group chat keeps working for months, for everyone who ever saw it.
The record is unusable
Reconstructing one evening means leafing through pages. Nobody does it, so the book is written but never read.
How it works
Three steps, about twenty seconds.
The resident makes a code
They open the app and tap once. A short code appears — no ambiguous letters, so it survives being read aloud down a phone line. They forward it however they already talk to their visitor.
The visitor arrives
They give the code at the boom. Nothing to install, no account, no app. The code is the whole interaction.
The guard verifies
The guard types it in and gets a clear answer with the house name: admit, or refuse with the reason. The code is spent the moment it is accepted.
Built for the real world
The gate keeps working when the internet does not.
Estate gates sit behind concrete walls, in dead spots, on ADSL lines that drop. Most access systems fail closed and the queue backs up onto the road.
- →The guard's phone keeps a local copy of the estate's live codes, so verification carries on with no signal at all.
- →Entries are queued on the device and sync the moment the connection returns.
- →If a code was already used elsewhere, the double entry is flagged for the estate manager rather than quietly dropped.
Estates, houses, residents
Every house has its own code, so people land in the right home.
An estate manager adds a house and its landlord once. The house gets a code of its own. A resident signs up with the estate code and their house code together, and an administrator approves them before anything can be generated.
Several people share one home — partners, adult children, a tenant — each on their own phone. The second person joins with the same house code, and the guard sees the house name on every verification.
One platform, four jobs
Everybody sees exactly what they need, and nothing else.
Residents
Generate up to three live codes at a time, watch them count down, and cancel one early if plans change. Their code history is theirs alone.
Guards
One screen, one input. Type the code, get an answer with the house name. The shift log shows every check made on that phone.
Estate managers
Add houses and landlords, approve residents, manage guards, and read a searchable trail of every entry and every refusal.
Platform operators
Onboard estates and watch platform health across all of them — without the ability to see a single resident's address or code.
Privacy by construction
A resident's code is not the estate's business.
The estate needs to know that somebody was admitted, at which gate and when. It does not need the characters a resident sent to their sister.
That separation is enforced in the database rather than in the interface. There is no screen anywhere in the product that shows a live code to anyone but the resident who made it — not because it is hidden, but because nothing on the server will return one.
Questions
Frequently asked
How does a visitor code work?
A resident opens the app and generates a short code, then forwards it to their visitor by WhatsApp, SMS or a phone call. At the gate the guard types it in and the app either admits the visitor or refuses, telling the guard exactly why. Each code works once and expires after six hours.
What happens if the gate has no internet?
The guard app keeps a local copy of the estate's live codes on the phone, so verification carries on with no signal at all. Entries are queued and synced the moment the connection returns. A network outage never becomes a gate outage.
Can a code be used twice?
No. Codes are single use. The moment one is accepted it is spent, and a second attempt is refused and recorded as a double-entry attempt for the estate manager to review.
How do residents join an estate?
Every estate has a code and every house within it has its own. A resident signs up with both, which places them in the right home, and an estate administrator approves them before any code can be generated. Nobody adds themselves to an estate.
Who can see a resident's visitor codes?
Only the resident who created them. Guards see a code when it is presented at the gate. Estate administrators see that an entry happened, not the code itself. Platform operators cannot see codes at all.
Do visitors need to install anything?
No. Visitors receive a short code through whatever messaging app the resident already uses. There is nothing to download and no account to create.
What happens when a resident moves out?
The estate manager deactivates their membership. Their account stays intact — people move between estates — but they can no longer generate codes for the home they left, and any live codes are revoked.
See it running at your gate.
A demo takes twenty minutes. We will set up your estate with a house and a guard phone so you can watch a code go out and come back in.