Self governing software?

We just had an accounting firm. Which may fulfill yoir needs other than a full on MC.

I agree with Sheila. Self-managing can work well for the right communities, but it requires a wide range of skills, and you have no guarantee that you will have, or continue to have, those skills available.

Even the best software will not take the place of people who know what they're doing (unless you have full blown AI). It simply automates a lot of your processes, and the person using the software will need to understand how to use it - otherwise you'll end up with automated missteps.

Self-management does work in the right environment. For us, we just used an accounting service to collect and manage our funds. Also they were the POC to gather notices from owners to us. We the board actually managed and made people adhere to the rules etc.

It may be that your HOA needs to re-evaluate it's relationship with an MC. A MC works for the HOA. Not the other way around. Many HOA's hire MC's to handle the HOA business for various reasons. Which may be a good thing or cripple the HOA. Your board would really need specific skills to make things work. Which only requirement to be on the board is to be an owner. So to find a skillset for HOA board duties may not necessarily exist.

So evaluate what you want an MC to do or what you want your HOA board to do. Maybe find compromise without all the extra expense/work. A MC may be as simple or complex as the HOA wants it to be.

Integrating functions and having them accessible from anywhere, anytime - and, not being captive - would be my goal - assuming the numbers were large enough. 189 units is probably large enough.

If your state requires a website, or if you have one already, I would consider combining functions ... here's a quick rundown of options ... don't know any of them, though. https://www.capterra.com/hoa-software/

it really sounds like you don't know a whole lot about HOA's, now do you?

As a CAM I echo your sentiment. Some of the most difficult associations I've taken over have been self-managed. They, typically, aren't versed in the requirements of the statutes and administrative law; and, tend to do what they want because "well, we did what we thought was right, but, no, we didn't check chapter XXX (718, 719, 720, etc.).

MarkW,

I'm still waiting for further info on what you didn't like about my post.

I thought I knew there were companies that provide not only the web portal - either via your previously held URL, following transfer from the currently holder - but, also provide an overlay of accounting, payment and tracking capability so the processes can be managed by a single HOA/COA administrator, or even by a property manager.

That was the purpose of my post. While I don't use this sort of system myself, I thought it was commercially available.

Is this not possible?

Depending on the complexity of the HOA QB may or may not not be a good fit.

I will point out that QB has NPF software it's not online.

Next what are you using an income statement for? I would think you should just need a balance sheet and statement of cashflows (people put way, WAY to much importance on that). If you end up with 0 in Cogs that would be fine and it is good to make sure you are not taking in any profit; the rest you should basically ignore.

2) I'm not sure why you would need 2 columns (one for paid and on for not?).

Other then some very specific customizations I would suggest working around the following reports

Customer aging detail

You can also work in the invoice list by date report.

In both cases some customization would be required based on personal taste.

The aging report and the invoice list will get you what you ultimately need which is to verify who paid and when.

A. Not sure what NPF software is.

B. On use of income statement. It's only important if we want to comply with State law for HOAs. For example, whenever a house gets sold, we must provide a Balance Sheet and Income Statement. No State law requirement re Cash Flow Statement. As an investor, I want to see a Cash Flow Statement. But most of my fellow owners wouldn't even know what one looks like. Your solution - to just ignore certain things - is what I do. But like I said, the problem isn't with me. It's a potential problem for a homeowner who loses confidence if they're told to "just ignore that" on something they've never seen before.

C. Benefit of separate Debit and Credit columns. What I said was that it would make it easy to match payments against invoices at a glance. Here's an example. We have Monthly Fees, Quarterly Fees, Late Fees, and a few other Fees. Let's say Monthlies are $150 and Quarterlies are $50. A homeowner questions a statement. First step - Count up the number of $150 charges that are in the Debits column. Then count up the number of $150 entries in the Credits column. When there's a different number of $150 entries in the two column, then bingo - You can clearly show to Mrs. Smith that she made 9 Monthly payments instead of 10. And that kind of visual clarity would take around 2-3 minutes to demonstrate to that owner. If the problem isn't in Monthlies, then move on to Quarterlies, and count entries again. And so on. But --- a single column with pluses and minuses all mixed together is a lot harder to explain to someone who isn't comfortable with numbers to begin with.

D. I agree with George that QB is a bit clunky. But that doesn't mean that we're going to move to something else. I like the fact that I have read-only access 24/7 so we're not waiting for a monthly report in the middle of the next month to see what's going on.

E. I'm familiar with the available QB reports that we could use. But I am looking for an individualized statement, not a listing of who owes what.

E. We can live with the Income Statement issue. We would spend money for a Add-on to QB that would give us a 2-column homeowner statement. Do you know someone who can do this kind of customization?

NFP (not NPF typo) Not for Profit. QB desktop has a special program just for not for profits (like they have for construction and POS).

Without looking through your books and running through the various options for customization and memorization it is hard pinpoint exactly what you want but take a look at the images below is this in the ball park? If you create a custom report template (like in any kind of software that I am aware of) then you should be able to run the memorized report with ease.

Creating a perfect custom report can be time consuming but may be worth it in the end.

If you wanted to take this further (although it sounds like you already have a management company) you can look me up in QB pro-adviser services my company is Virtual Task Accounting.

Hope I helped

If you want custom reports to fit your particular look and feel, cant you simply make them yourself in excel? Export transactions and re-open in Excel, then make pie charts, reports, etc.

Not rocket science. Takes 3 minutes........

How to export reports from QuickBooks Online to Excel.

Select Reports.
Search for and select the report you want to export.
At the top of the report, select the Export icon. Then select Export to Excel.
Save the file somewhere you can easily find, like your Downloads folder or your desktop.

Ok. So we export to Excel. And now we have a spreadsheet with info on all the owners in a neat little chart.

But wait. What we want is a customer statement - And there's the rub. The spreadsheet needs to be converted to something that can be sent to an individual owner with only their info on it.

And that is what we would be willing to pay for. As I said, we don't have that particular skill set. If you want to make that conversion, we would pay you to do it.

If you want software to do this for you there are property management software such as www.buildium.com or many others for individual accounts.

I dont see a need to spend any money to do that, we dont even use excel, we simply use google spreadsheets...... free. I just say Excel because people understand that.

Obviously, you and I are talking by each other at this point.

I am looking for an add-on to QuickBooks that will capture the data and put it in a customer statement that has a Debit and Credit column.

You say I can change to Buildium. Not interested.

You say I can hand write it out by hand. Not interested.

So, thanks for your thoughts. I'm done.

Hi Hans
Thanks for trying.
In a perfect world, payments can be applied against a particular invoice. Which seems to be what your attachment does.
But in the sample I provided the link to, payments are entered into a separate column but not matched against particular invoices.
Matching is time-consuming and unnecessary with greater than 90% of our homeowners. (Less than 10% are slow payers.)