Association Software Suggestions?

Started by MarieH4 • 3 replies • 1199 views

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MarieH4 (California)
Posts: 1

Posted:

Hi everyone,

We are a large (800+ homes) association that does only minor property maintenance. Mostly we enforce CC&Rs and have architectural committees. Our current management company does not offer any software for board members or owners to access. Owners cannot submit architectural applications online, see the status of an application or prior approvals or even pay their dues online. Owners and board members receive all information requested via paper. No tracking is done on owner calls, etc.

It seems that association software is usually provided as part of a management contract. Does anyone know of hosted software that could be licensed by the HOA itself? I think our software is just as important or more important than our manager. I would like to association to own it.

We are located in California so we are subject to Davis Sterling.

Thanks,

Marie

TimB4 (Tennessee)
Posts: 21,059

Posted:

Check out one of the sponsors of this site. You can find them in the yellow border on the left.

Any other suggestions may end up violating the posting rules. However, others may be able to send you suggestions directly if you provide an e-mail address. If you don't want to use your personal e-mail, you can make an account from various e-mail providers (g-mail, hotmail, etc.) specifically for this purpose.

RichardP13 (California)
Posts: 1,767

Posted:

Marie

If you don't need accounting software try Smart HOA from Davis-Stirling.Com. I did a test run when it first came out and was very impressed.

SteveM9 (Massachusetts)
Posts: 3,699

Posted:

Quote:

Owners cannot submit architectural applications online, see the status of an application or prior approvals or even pay their dues online.

A simple email address to submit an application would be adequate. If you wanted to get more complex, you can use gmail to setup a web page form and it will keep the results in an online accessible excel sheet. You can share any excel sheet with google docs and people could see approvals, disapprovals. But I would assume you would notify the person by us mail of an approval or disapproval in case of a legal fight.

Paying dues online is a different matter. If your dues are $100 a month, you would have to charge a convenience fee of $3-$6 to accept an online payment with visa/mastercard. Many people will not want to pay an extra $72 year to pay online when paying by check is much cheaper.

Quote:

Owners and board members receive all information requested via paper.

Paper that has been through the usmail is critical when it comes to court cases.

Quote:

No tracking is done on owner calls, etc.

Who is not tracking this? The HOA or mgmt company? If its the Mgmt company, was this part of their contracted duties you are paying them for? If I was the mgmt company, I would charge you more to track this. Why? Its extra work.

Solution? Simply use an excel sheet or word file to track calls. If you use google docs, you can share the log online (word, excel, powerpoint, pdf, etc)

Quote:

I would like to association to own it.

Well, if you want a hosted solution, you will not own it. If the company goes out of business in 5, 10 or 25 years, its all gone. And even if they hand you the database file, its unlikely you can afford someone to convert it to a new format. I worked at one business that paid a company $100,000 to convert a database over to a new database.

Why do I recommend google docs? It's free. You can save the excel files (workbooks) to disk, and print them for permanent records, excel has been around since 1982 (31 years) When dealing with HOA's that go for decades to 100 years, printing paper records is very important.

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