Whether you run a 200-bed hostel or rent a single room in your house to a student, RooMates is Ghana's booking + management platform, verified listings, secure online payments, manage-as-much-or-as-little-as-you-want. Free to list. No commission, ever.
From sign-up to accepting your first booking in under 30 minutes.
Sign up with your email, verify your identity, and add your hostel name and location.
Enter room types, set prices, upload photos, describe your amenities, and configure availability.
Link your Hubtel, Paystack, or bank merchant account - students pay directly into your account.
Your listing goes live. Students discover, book, and pay - you get notified instantly.
A complete command centre for your hostel, bookings, payments, rooms, residents, and analytics.
Approve, reject, or modify all incoming reservations in real time from a single dashboard.
Connect your Hubtel, Paystack, or bank gateway. Students pay through your merchant account - funds go directly to you.
Access detailed student information, booking history, emergency contacts, and residency status for every resident.
Track occupancy rates, monthly revenue, and booking trends with easy-to-read visual dashboards.
Set up different room types, blocks, gender rules, floor levels, and per-bed availability with ease.
Receive, track, and resolve student complaints through a structured workflow with status updates on both sides.
The full list of what RooMates does, for owners who want the detail before they commit. Click any section to expand.
Bookings & Room Allotment
5 capabilities
Semester, academic year, short stay & bulk bookings
Configure which booking types each hostel accepts. Short-stay (nightly/weekly) and bulk group bookings run through their own dedicated flows.
Per-bed availability tracking
Rooms aren't just 'occupied or not'.each bed is individually allotted, so mixed-gender rules, shared rooms and partial occupancy are handled natively.
One-click room reservation, drop & reassignment
Staff can reserve, drop, or reassign beds on the allotment detail page. Booking status, bed position and student profile stay in sync automatically.
Change-room flow mid-booking
Move a resident to a different room without rebuilding the booking.the old bed frees up, the new one is allocated, and the audit trail is preserved.
Roommate view
Students can see who's sharing their room; staff can use the same view to resolve compatibility issues before they escalate to complaints.
Payments, Receipts & Reconciliation
5 capabilities
Hubtel, Paystack & custom bank gateway support
Each hostel connects its own merchant account. Webhooks reconcile paid/failed transactions automatically.no manual ticking.
Partial & milestone payments
Accept partial payments towards a booking. The system tracks outstanding balance and sends a notification on every payment.
Auto-generated PDF receipts
On full payment, an official branded PDF receipt is rendered server-side and emailed to the student. Staff and accountants see the same receipt in the portal.
Transaction fee configuration
Configure per-gateway or flat fees. Fees appear transparently on the booking page so students see exactly what they're paying.
Transactional account balances
Each hostel has a live transactional account showing money received, fees deducted, and net payable.useful for monthly reconciliation.
Residents, Compliance & Enforcement
6 capabilities
Termination with automatic bed recovery
Terminate an allotment and the bed reverts to available instantly. The booking keeps its history so disputes can still be investigated.
Eviction with refund workflow
Record an eviction with a reason code, mark it refundable or not, track the refund status (pending → notified → processed), and permanently flag the student so they can't book at any hostel on the platform again.
Evicted & blocked student lists
Dedicated sidebar pages for blocked and evicted residents with reason, refund state, and the ability to reverse an eviction if it was a mistake.
Complaint ticketing
Students raise complaints from their dashboard; staff work them through a status pipeline (new → in-progress → resolved) with comments visible on both sides.
Check-in / check-out logging
Record resident check-ins and check-outs with timestamps. Powers occupancy reports and makes end-of-semester clearance auditable.
Reviews & moderation
Students leave star ratings and photos after their stay. Owners see them on their dashboard; admins can remove individual images or whole reviews if they violate policy.
Staff, Roles & Multi-Tenancy
4 capabilities
Six built-in staff roles
Hostel Admin (full access), Manager (operations + staff), Director (oversight + reports), Accountant (payments + receipts), Staff (day-to-day) and Porter (check-in / check-out only). Each role sees a tailored dashboard; permissions are enforced on every view and database query, a porter cannot see revenue reports, an accountant cannot deactivate students.
Force-password-change on first login
New staff are created with a temporary password and must change it on first login before they can access any data.
Multiple hostels under one account
Owners running several properties switch between them from the sidebar. Bookings, payments and residents stay scoped to the active hostel.
Staff welcome emails
When you add a new staff member, they get a branded welcome email with their initial credentials, role, and a link to the portal.
Security & Audit
4 capabilities
Separated student and staff authentication
Students authenticate via JWT on the Next.js frontend; staff use server-rendered sessions on the portal. Password reset flows are fully isolated so a compromised student account can never pivot to staff.
Short-lived staff reset links
Password reset links for staff expire after one hour (students get Django's default). Rate limits are stacked per-IP and per-normalised-email to block both broad and targeted abuse.
Security audit log
Every password reset request, completion, cross-flow refusal and invalid token attempt is recorded in a queryable SecurityEvent table.ready for incident response.
Email verification on signup
Students must verify their email before they can book. Verification tokens are single-use and tied to the email state, so the link can't be replayed.
Reporting & Communication
5 capabilities
Three dedicated report dashboards
Built-in Occupancy, Financial and Operations reports, each a separate page with charts, breakdowns, and CSV/PDF/Excel export. Occupancy splits per block / room type / gender; Financial covers revenue, fees and payouts; Operations tracks check-ins, complaints and damage.
Payment notifications & receipts by email
Every payment triggers an immediate notification; the final payment additionally attaches the PDF receipt. All Brevo-backed and mobile-friendly.
Featured hostel placement
Promoted hostels surface at the top of school and home-page listings, driving direct bookings from students searching by university.
Public hostel pages with SEO
Every published hostel gets its own indexed public page with photos, amenities, price range, reviews and a direct booking button.
Callback & demo booking requests
Prospects can request a callback or book a product demo from the public site. The requests land in your inbox and the admin portal for follow-up.
Migration & Onboarding
8 capabilities
Already have a system? List anyway.
You don't have to replace your current setup to benefit from RooMates. Publish a public listing for your hostel, photos, room types, prices, location, amenities, and let students discover and book online. Bookings flow into your inbox; you keep running operations in whatever you use today. No internal migration required.
Two ways to use RooMates
(1) List + manage, full hostel management system replaces your current ops, free for owners. (2) List only, keep your current system; use RooMates as a discovery channel + secure payment gateway. Switch between modes at any time.
Move from spreadsheets in an afternoon
Already running on Excel, Google Sheets or paper? Send us your file in any format. Our team imports your blocks, room types, rooms and current residents straight into the platform, typically same-day for hostels with under 200 rooms.
Free concierge migration for 100+ rooms
Bigger inventories get hands-on support: a dedicated specialist maps your existing structure to RooMates' blocks / room types / rooms model, imports your data, and stays on standby through your first week of live bookings. No charge.
Run RooMates alongside your old system
You don't have to cut over in one weekend. Switch one block to RooMates first, validate it for a month, then bring the rest across when you're confident. We've watched dozens of hostels do exactly this.
Guided onboarding tour built into the dashboard
First time logging in? A topic-picker tour walks you through the dashboard, sidebar, hostel profile, rooms, students, bookings and payments, at your own pace. Restart anytime from the user menu.
Live in 30 minutes, first booking same day
Sign up, add your first block + room type + handful of rooms, connect a Hubtel or Paystack key, publish. Most owners have their listing live and accepting their first booking before the day is out.
WhatsApp + phone support, free, in your timezone
Stuck during setup? Our team answers in English on WhatsApp and by phone during Ghanaian working hours. No ticket queues, no tier-1 deflection.
Looking for something specific? Book a demo and we'll walk you through the exact workflow for your hostel.
RooMates connects to your existing merchant account, you keep full control of your funds and fees. No middleman, no extra cuts.
Accept Mobile Money & card payments via your Hubtel merchant account
Link your Paystack account for card, bank, and mobile money payments
Integrate your own bank-issued payment gateway directly
Link your Hubtel, Paystack, or bank gateway in settings
Student pays through your own merchant account on the platform
Money goes straight to your merchant account - RooMates never touches it
You get notified and your dashboard updates in real time
Real-time visibility into revenue, occupancy, and booking behaviour. Understand what's working and where to improve.
Monthly revenue charts, payment breakdowns, and income forecasts - all exportable.
Live occupancy percentage per block, room type, and semester - spot gaps instantly.
Visual trends showing peak booking periods, popular room types, and seasonal patterns.
Understand your residents - universities, booking types, stay durations, and repeat rates.
From single private hostels to entire universities, RooMates scales with you.
On-campus accommodation with semester-based booking cycles and large-scale room management.
Off-campus operators who want maximum online visibility and a full digital operations suite.
Got a spare room, or a whole annex, in your house? List just that one room (or three, or ten). Students near KNUST, UG, UCC and other Ghanaian campuses are searching for exactly what you have. RooMates handles discovery, payments and student verification, you stay in control of who moves in.
Self-contained rooms, studios and shared flats catering to students or short-stay visitors. Set your own rules: minimum stay, gender, deposit, who can apply.
Daily / weekly / monthly accommodation for visitors, interns, NSS personnel, and conference attendees, same listing tools, same secure payments.
Universities, NGOs, and companies that need to bulk-book multiple rooms for groups, events, or extended corporate stays.
Hostels on the platform
Students booked
Payments processed
Owner satisfaction
“RooMates completely transformed how we manage bookings. We went from spreadsheets to a fully digital system in just two days.”
Kwame Asante
Legacy Hall, Kumasi
“The Mobile Money integration is a game changer. Our students pay instantly and we get notified right away.”
Adwoa Mensah
Sunrise Hostel, Accra
“We handle over 200 rooms and RooMates makes it effortless. The analytics dashboard alone is worth it.”
Kofi Osei
UniStay, Cape Coast
Everything you need to know before listing your hostel.
Yes, that's exactly who RooMates is built for. List the one or two rooms in your house exactly as a hostel would: photos, price, availability, who you'd accept (e.g. female students, no smoking, KNUST or KsTU only). Verified students near you find your listing, book online, and pay securely. You decide who you confirm.
Yes. Self-contained apartments, studios, shared flats, annexes, boys' quarters, all welcome. Set your own minimum stay (a semester, a month, a week), gender rules, deposit, and house rules. The same secure payment + booking flow works for any kind of room.
Absolutely. You don't need to migrate or replace anything. Just publish a public listing, photos, room types, prices, location, amenities, contact info, and students can discover and book your hostel online. Bookings come through to you by email; you keep running operations in whatever system you already use. Some owners eventually switch over to RooMates' full HMS, but you're never required to.
Yes. The discovery / SEO benefit works exactly the same whether you use the full management dashboard or just the public listing. Your hostel appears in school searches, the home-page browse grid, and on the school-specific landing pages, same as every other hostel.
Yes. Listing your hostel on RooMates is completely free. There are no setup fees, no monthly subscriptions. You only pay standard payment gateway fees from your own provider (Hubtel or Paystack).
No. RooMates never holds your funds. Students pay directly into your own Hubtel or Paystack merchant account. We facilitate the connection - not the transaction.
Most owners go live within 30 minutes. Create an account, add your rooms and photos, connect your payment gateway, and you're ready. Our team verifies new listings within 24 hours.
Yes. The owner dashboard supports multiple properties under a single account. Switch between hostels and manage everything from one place.
Semester stays, academic year bookings, short stays (days to weeks), and bulk bookings for organisations. You control which types your hostel accepts.
Not at all. RooMates is designed for non-technical users. The dashboard is intuitive, and our support team is available via WhatsApp and phone to help you get started.
We do it for you. Send us your file in any format, Excel, Google Sheets, even photos of a notebook page, and our team imports your blocks, room types, rooms and active residents directly into RooMates. Hostels under 200 rooms are usually live the same day. Free of charge.
Yes. You can put one block of your hostel on RooMates first, take real bookings on it for a month, and only roll the rest of your inventory over once you're confident. Several owners have migrated this way.
No commission, ever. RooMates is free for hostel owners, no listing fee, no booking fee, no monthly subscription. The only deduction is the standard payment-gateway fee from Hubtel or Paystack, which goes to them, not us. Funds settle directly to your merchant account.
It's yours. Export every booking, every payment, every resident as CSV or Excel from the reports pages. We keep a copy for the legal retention window required by Ghanaian law and then permanently delete it on request.
Join hundreds of hostel owners already growing their business with RooMates. It's free to list, no setup fees, no monthly charges.
Free to list · Own payment gateway · Live in 30 min · No tech skills needed
