How Ghana’s largest metropolitan assembly went from GHS 8.5 million to collecting GHS 25.5 million in a single year

Before Hubtel 
A city that was owed more than it could collect 

Ghana’s largest metropolitan assembly collects property rates from landowners, operating permit fees from businesses, and levies from companies that put signs on buildings. The money is owed. It exists. The problem was that most of it never arrived. 

In its best year before Hubtel, the Assembly collected GHS 8.5 million. By 2023, that had fallen to GHS 5.3 million. These numbers are not explained by a shortage of people who owed money. They are explained by a collection system that could not reach them, could not track them, and could not account for what agents were doing on the field on any given day. 

The Assembly printed paper bills and sent agents across the city to distribute them door to door and business to business. When a ratepayer had cash ready, they paid to the agent. The agent goes back to the accounts office at the end of the day to have the day’s collection recorded. The cash later goes to the bank. Every step in that chain was invisible to the people running the organisation. By the time the finance team knew what had been collected that day, the day was already gone. By the time leadership had a picture of the month’s revenue, the month was already history. There was little to no way to check whether an agent had remitted everything they collected. No way to know which areas of the city had been covered. No way to see whether revenue was ahead or behind until long after it mattered. 

This chain had gaps that compounded every year. Agents collected cash that did not always make it back to the office. Business Operating Permit certificates were forged and used by ratepayers who had paid nothing, while the Assembly had no way to verify whether a certificate was genuine. Properties sat unregistered for years because a field agent had no mechanism to add a new address to the system on the spot. Businesses that should have been paying were simply never on the list. 

Annual revenue collections 2021 – 2026 

Bringing Clarity 
Giving the Assembly its first real view of its revenue 

The first thing Hubtel did was make the problem visible. 

Before any collections could improve, AMA needed a clear picture of who owed what, where the money was going, and how much was being lost at each stage of the process. That meant building a system that could capture every transaction, connect every rate payer to a record, and surface that information to the people who needed it, in real time.  

The platform covers every point in the collection journey. A field inspector now works from a mobile portal that shows their assigned area on a map and lets them navigate to specific properties, collect payment digitally, and issue a receipt on the spot. The ratepayer receives an SMS bill before the inspector arrives and can pay directly from their phone without handling cash at all. If they prefer to pay from home without any inspector involvement, they can do that through a web portal or a USSD code that works without internet access. 

At the other end, the Assembly’s leadership opens a dashboard and sees what has been collected today, by which agent, through which channel, and in which part of the city. Reconciliation that used to wait until end of day, and often end of month, now happens on demand. Every transaction carries a timestamp and the name of the person who processed it. 

The forgery problem was closed by attaching a QR code to every Business Operating Permit certificate. An inspector on the field can scan it instantly to confirm whether a certificate is genuine. Paper bills were replaced with SMS delivery to every registered ratepayer. And when an inspector finds a property or business that is not yet in the system, they can register it on the spot and bring it into the revenue base immediately. 

One part of the build stood apart from the rest. Hubtel introduced a commission and incentive engine that pays agents 10% on every collection up to GHS 5,000. The Assembly gained a motivated and active field force without spending anything extra to create one. 

The platform covers eight distinct collection and management tools, each built to close a specific gap. 

Putting Management in Control: 
From finding out to seeing it happen 

Before the platform, there was no way to know on Monday whether the agents who went out on Friday had remitted everything they collected. There was no way to know how much any one agent was bringing in, whether certain parts of the city were being covered, or whether a particular revenue line was running ahead or behind for the month. 

That changed completely. 

The Staff Portal gives the Assembly’s leadership a live feed of everything flowing in. When a payment happens, it appears. When an agent collects on the field, the collection is attributed to that agent by name. Leadership can look at the same data in real time and see who is working, where collections are concentrated, and where attention needs to go. Decisions that previously waited on a weekly report can now be made the same morning. 

Reconciliation went from an end-of-day manual process that no one could fully trust to something that runs on demand. Staff can filter by date, channel, or sub-metro and pull a full transaction report whenever they need it. The Assembly no longer has to take an agent’s word for what they collected. Every figure has a timestamp, a channel, and a name behind it. 

The Commission Engine gave the Assembly a specific management capability that had not existed before. Because every agent’s collections are recorded live, leadership can see not just how much was collected but who collected it. Both active and inactive agents became visible, and the data itself became a management tool. 

The platform also revealed something that had been happening off the record. Despite the digital infrastructure creating a full audit trail, some parties attempted to collect payments outside the system to avoid the commission mechanism. The platform made those attempts detectable, and therefore addressable, in a way that would have been impossible before. 

The operational change at each stage of the collection process: 

Pursuing Growth 
What happened when the system finally worked 

In 2025, the first full year with the platform running across all three revenue lines, the Assembly collected GHS 25.51 million. That is three times the best year it had ever recorded before Hubtel and the highest annual total in its history. 

To see what drove it, you have to look at each part of the collection operation. 

Property Rate was the biggest contributor. Collections came in at GHS 16.47 million in 2025. The Inspector Portal was the main engine. Inspector-led visits accounted for 40.71% of all Property Rate transactions in 2025. Consistent, trackable, map-navigated visits to high-value properties turned a category that had been largely unmanaged into the Assembly’s largest single source of income. 

Business Operating Permits came in at GHS 8.54 million, the highest annual total on record for that revenue line. Part of that growth came from expansion: two new sub-metros were added at the start of 2025, bringing 2,636 businesses into the system for the first time. Part came from better follow-through with businesses already registered but not yet paying. 

In June 2025, the Commission Engine was activated. Inspectors who hit their collection targets started earning. The results appeared in the monthly numbers immediately. Collections in the second half of 2025 ran consistently higher than the first half, sustained by a field force that now had a direct financial reason to keep going. Across the full year, inspector-initiated collections totaled GHS 10.42 million, 41% of everything the Assembly brought in. 

Monthly revenue collections – full year 2025 (GHS Millions) 

The pattern of who was paying also shifted. In 2024, the average transaction on the platform was worth GHS 928. In 2025, it grew to GHS 2,081. By the first five months of 2026, it had reached GHS 2,312. Higher-value ratepayers, the banks, the large commercial properties; the warehouses are now paying through the system. That is not just a revenue number. It is a sign that the platform has reach with the payers that matter most. 

In 2025, the platform also grew the Assembly’s rateable base. Field inspectors identified and registered 351 new properties, adding GHS 2.82 million to the Assembly’s expected annual collections going forward. A further 1,129 businesses were registered through field visits, adding GHS 4.93 million to the Business Operating Permit base. Every year of active enforcement not only collects revenue from the current period; it grows the pool from which future revenue can be drawn. 

By April 2026, GHS 12.41 million had been collected in four months. That is more than the Assembly collected in any full year before 2025. Property Rate collections in April 2026 were 38% ahead of April 2025. The full year is on track to reach GHS 40.2 million. 

In 2022, the Assembly’s best year, GHS 8.5 million arrived. In 2025, GHS 25.5 million. In 2026, at the current pace, GHS 40 million. The ceiling the Assembly operated under for years was not a revenue ceiling. It was a visibility ceiling. Once the Assembly could see its money, it could go and collect it.