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Over the last 5 or so years we have found 5 or 6 instances where the strata manager has paid for work that either:
was not done
was done to a lot owners private garden (3 times)
was not authorised or requestedWe are using the My-community portal from Urbanise but the strata manager is resisting turning on the Invoice Approval option in the portal>
Does anyone use this?
Can you set it up so that only invoices more than $50 need to be approved and standard invoices (e,g, sm fees, electricity, water) don’t need to be approved, that 2 out of a 4 possible people can approve?
Questioning the invoice before it is paid is ALOT easier than questioning it a year later at the AGM.
Thanks for any assistance,Woodwalker
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Tell the strata manager that failure to turn on the invoice approval option will be seen as a breach of contract, which may lead to termination followed by a forensic examination of all previous payments. That should do the trick. The strata manager should do what the owners want, not the other way round.
The opinions offered in these Forum posts and replies are not intended to be taken as legal advice. Readers with serious issues should consult experienced strata lawyers.
so that only invoices more than $50 need to be approved
If you’re concerned re the integrity of your SM don’t let them pay any invoice without Committee approval. Otherwise you may well find that every invoice is for one dollar below your limit, i.e. $49 dollars.
Urbanise
I am a strata manager & use Urbanise everyday. It can be set to allow authorisations on expense levels and number of committee member approvals. It doesn’t automatically allow approval of certain invoices (i.e. power, water etc) I would recommend you as a committee member approve all invoices. It is a very simple one click process to approve invoices.
@WoodWalker
I feel ya.
Our SM moved to Urbanise but never even mentioned the portal to us. The last thing they want is people being able to see the actual accounts. I asked them about it and …. crickets
Will be rid of them soon.
WoodWalker I hear you also
Our SM has also switched to Urbanise
During the last financial year the following has happened and unfortunately Owners will never know
Late Payment fees twice for electricity & gas , the strata manager even tried to avoid paying the $12 fee on one invoice by paying only the usage sum
Sydney Water Rate unpaid to 6 months and then duplicated payment
Sundry Expenses for over $6K used for invoices related to other expense eg Fire Protection that affects our Budget
Admin invoices of over $20K applied to the Sinking fund without committees approval
I have noticed our strata manager is also cherry picking the recording of documents
Hope to be rid of them soon also
Hi all,
I use Urbanise to run our self-managed building, so know the back-end pretty well.
It has a payments “Approval setup” screen with comprehensive options including:
• Set a $$ threshold for approval
• Set the number of committee members needed to approve
• ‘Whitelist’ suppliers with individual $ thresholds (so, for example, regular bills like power and cleaning don’t need committee approval).
So I recommend compiling the budgeted items you’re happy to have paid without approval; set reasonable limits on others and requirements for committee pre-approval on any categories you want to eyeball first. Approve plan as a committee and send it to the SM.
For those of you who are thinking of self-management but haven’t settled on software, have a look at StrataBox
The opinions offered in these Forum posts and replies are not intended to be taken as legal advice. Readers with serious issues should consult experienced strata lawyers.
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