In this article
Kooky
Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.
About Kooky and Shaka →Queensland's Residential Tenancies Authority switched to updated core systems on 2 June 2026, and four in five of the tenancy and bond forms it received over the year arrived through a digital channel. Both facts come from the RTA's Annual Report 2025-26, whose letter of compliance is dated 10 September 2026 and which sits on the authority's annual report page, last updated on 25 September 2026.
The report is the first full account of a change that every property manager, owner and tenant in the State now works with, whether they noticed it or not. The RTA is the State body that holds rental bonds, 645,954 of them at 30 June 2026 according to the report, and the software that records those bonds, pays them out and runs the online forms is one that agencies, owners and tenants have no choice but to use. This article sets out what the report says about that system, what the year's figures show about how the sector reaches the authority, and what the document leaves unsaid.
Residential Tenancies Authority, Annual Report 2025-26, letter of compliance dated 10 September 2026.
What went live on 2 June
The report calls the project the myRTA Modernisation Program and describes it as a multi-year program that was implemented on 2 June 2026. According to the report, the go-live covered three things at once: the customer relationship management system, which is the record of every person and organisation the authority deals with; the finance systems; and RTA Web Services, the set of online forms through which bonds are lodged, topped up and refunded.
The authority describes the new platform only in general terms. It says the introduction of cloud-based technology makes the organisation more flexible and adaptable, and its chief executive, Steve Davidson, writes in his message that the updated core systems strengthen the RTA's ability to respond to changes in customer expectations and in security. The report says the program was delivered in June 2026 and that the staff who remained on it were then moved to support the transition to ordinary operations.
Related readVirtual tours, 3D models and floor plans: accuracy and the lawOversight sat with a myRTA Project Board which, the report says, met at least monthly and approved changes to scope and cost. On funding, the financial overview states that the system updates were paid for from the authority's existing cash reserves.
For the people who use the service, the practical point is the date. A bond lodged or a refund requested since 2 June 2026 has been handled by the new systems. The report covers a financial year that ended four weeks after the switch, so almost all of the activity it counts was processed on the systems that were replaced.
Four in five forms now arrive online
The headline measure of digital use is the share of all tenancy and bond forms sent to the RTA through digital channels. The report puts it at 80.4 per cent in 2025-26, against 79.9 per cent in 2024-25 and 75 per cent in 2023-24. The rise over the latest year is half a percentage point; over two years it is 5.4 points.
Bond refunds are further along than the average. The report says 93.5 per cent of bond refund forms were submitted digitally in 2025-26. It does not give an equivalent share for bond lodgements, and it notes that paper forms remain available.
The volume passing through RTA Web Services grew much faster than the share did. The report counts 988,333 requests through the service in 2025-26, which is 77,740 more than the year before, an increase of 8.5 per cent. The year before that, the increase had been about 4 per cent.
Related readACCC accepts REA undertaking: agencies need not list every propertyResidential Tenancies Authority, Annual Report 2025-26. A request is counted by the RTA; the report does not break the total down by form type.
Two things can lift that count without lifting the share of forms that are digital. One is simply more tenancies: the report records 645,954 bonds held at 30 June 2026, up 2.2 per cent on a year earlier. The other is more activity on each bond. The authority received 231,739 new bond lodgements in the year, up from 227,569, and 266,733 bond top-ups or increases, up from 242,710. On those figures, top-ups now outnumber new lodgements.
The older channels are shrinking
The same report shows the traffic leaving the channels that digital forms were meant to relieve. Phone enquiries answered fell, visits to the front counter fell by a fifth, and bond searches were down by a tenth. Visits to the RTA's own website fell too. The report gives the counts without offering an explanation for them.
| Channel | 2024-25 | 2025-26 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Website visits | 4,549,358 | 4,297,039 | Down 5.5% |
| Phone enquiries answered | 341,728 | 329,652 | Down 3.5% |
| Front counter enquiries | 6,444 | 5,164 | Down 19.9% |
| Bond searches | 158,087 | 141,566 | Down 10.5% |
Residential Tenancies Authority, Annual Report 2025-26.
The phone remains a large operation all the same. The report gives an average of 1,308 calls answered each working day. It also records 648 calls answered by 30 June 2026 on Songlines, a phone service for First Nations customers that the authority launched in July 2025, and 3,089 calls handled with an interpreter. Overall client satisfaction is reported at 84.4 per cent, up from 83 per cent and above the 75 per cent target set in the authority's Service Delivery Statement.
The website was reworked during the period as well. In a news item dated 21 July 2026, the RTA said it had added an accessibility tool offering nine profiles, including a screen reader and colour adjustments, and an improved function for printing a plain version of any page or saving it as a PDF. The same item said the authority is phasing out its fact sheets and reducing the number of PDFs on the site, while forms and the guides for managing parties stay available.
Related readAutomated valuation models: what is behind an online price estimateWhat the speed figures mean for a bond
For a tenant waiting on a refund or an agency reconciling its lodgements, the figures that matter are the turnaround times. The report gives an average of 0.3 days to process a bond lodgement and 0.7 days to process a bond refund in 2025-26, against a refund target of one day.
Those averages cover 217,589 bond refunds, a number almost unchanged from the 218,693 of the year before. The money involved is larger than it was: the financial overview puts the value of rental bonds held at $1.461 billion, up 9.9 per cent, a figure that excludes unclaimed and outstanding bond money. More bonds, a higher total value and a flat number of refunds: that is the load the new systems inherit.
Where a refund is contested, the matter moves from software to people. The report counts 22,336 conciliation requests progressed in 2025-26, down from 23,408, with 78.9 per cent of disputes resolved after conciliation, up from 77.5 per cent. It says 1,925 disputes went on to the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal, which is 8.6 per cent of those conciliated.
Security, AI and the audit of the new system
A system that holds 645,954 bond records holds personal information about the people behind them, and the report gives some account of how that is protected. It says the RTA aligns its cyber security with the Essential Eight, the set of baseline controls published by the Australian Signals Directorate, and with the Queensland Government's Information and Cyber Security Policy, IS18:2025. A Cyber and Information Security Working Group oversees policies and threats, and the authority works with managed service providers.
Related readDomain and REA take their rival marketing claims to the Federal CourtThe report also deals with artificial intelligence inside the organisation. It says the RTA adopted new security controls and technical capabilities to manage the use of AI and developed training for staff, and it describes the policy and the training as safeguards for corporate and customer data. Staff were trained on a general-purpose AI chat assistant, according to the section on the workforce. Nothing in the passages read for this article says AI is used to decide a bond claim or a dispute.
Two internal audits bear directly on the technology. The report says the RTA's internal auditor reviewed the myRTA bond management controls, assessing the design effectiveness of the controls over bond processes in the new system, and separately reviewed the information security management system against the international standard ISO 27001. The report says recommended actions are carried out on an agreed schedule. It does not publish the findings.
The cost of the program and the platform behind it are not disclosed
The passages on the myRTA Modernisation Program give no total cost, name no supplier and list no later phases. They also do not describe what changed on screen for tenants and property managers, or report any backlog after the switch.
What the money shows
The financial statements carry a trace of the changeover. Depreciation and amortisation, the yearly charge for wearing out assets such as software, fell from $2.897 million in 2024-25 to $69,000 in 2025-26, and intangible assets are shown as nil at 30 June 2026 against $11,000 a year earlier. The report gives total operating expenses of $50.5 million for the year, and a workforce of 249 people, or 233.4 full-time equivalents, as at 26 June 2026.
The authority measures its own efficiency by its operating cost as a percentage of the bonds it holds. The Service Delivery Statement table in the report shows 3.5 per cent for 2025-26 against a target of 3.7 per cent, and sets a target of 2.9 per cent for 2026-27. The 2026-27 target is the first one set with the new systems in place.
The report also notes that the 2026-27 budget includes an increase of $18.5 million over four years, which it links to earlier funding shortfalls and to continued work on the efficiency of systems and processes.
What comes next
The report closes one planning period and opens another. The digital work was carried under the fourth objective of the RTA's Strategic Plan 2022-26, which called for digitally transformed service provision inside and outside the organisation. Its successor, the Strategic Plan 2026-30, is described in the report as putting the weight on accessible services and on a secure, adaptable and sustainable organisation.
No further stages of the modernisation program are dated in the report, so the next measured view of the new systems will be the 2026-27 annual report, the first to cover a full year on them. The figures to compare then are the ones set out here: the 80.4 per cent digital share of forms, the 0.7 day average for a refund and the cost target of 2.9 per cent.
Kooky, from Shaka
Kooky edits Queensland Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for Queensland property professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.
