Monthly financial reports

SFH, WA, annual budget about $30,000

In the past, our management company has always emailed the board monthly financial reports that include balance sheet, income statement, list of delinquent accounts, invoices, and bank statements. As treasurer, I use those documents to create my monthly report (basically a detailed cash flow report) that is accurate to the penny (our MC has a history of making accounting mistakes, so I double-check everything.) I am also secretary, so I make sure to save a copy of all the reports in the association's files for the board's easy future access--because our MC charges the association if the board needs access to our files. The MC posts a copy of their reports on our web portal, for all homeowners to access, but it does not include the list of delinquent accounts nor any "sensitive" invoices, such as from collections attorneys.

This week the MC has rolled out a new system: their monthly reports are now integrated into the web portal for board access only and they did not post the sanitized copy for homeowners. I have a few concerns, and am looking for feedback here before bringing them up at the next meeting.

-- The new system does not include an actual copy of the bank statements. Just a list of credits and debits from each account. It appears this may be available in real time, or some approximation of it. It feels like I should see actual bank statements every month. I don't have access to the bank accounts.

-- The monthly report from MC is no longer a single PDF, easy to save in my files. I now have to click 20+ different links to see everything and other than screen shots I can't see an easy way to download, print, or save a copy. Is this progress, or a potential problem?

-- There doesn't seem to be any report for the homeowners to access. Should there be? It feels like there should be, but the likelihood that anyone ever actually looks at it is really small. I will still prepare my monthly treasurer's report, which gets posted with the meeting minutes, and homeowners can still request access to the records for a processing fee, but is that enough?

Can you think of any potential problems I've missed? Thank you.

Thank you.

The name on the bank accounts is "Management Company", Agent for "Association". Only the management company has access to the bank statements and bank website.

When I got on the board years ago, I suggested that the treasurer should have read-only access to the bank website, but the other two board members said they weren't comfortable with that and wanted the whole board to have access. I filled out the paperwork to get access for myself but the other two never did, so no one was given access.

There has been a lot of turnover over the years; maybe it's time to bring this up again.

Thank you.

Our covenants require an annual review of insurance coverage and reserves, which we do, but says nothing about general financial audits or banking. Our state statutes require an audit for operating budgets over $50,000, and we are under that. An annual "reconciliation" is recommended to make sure budgets and actual spending are aligned and dues are set at a reasonable level--I prepare that myself every year because our community prioritizes keeping costs very low and doesn't want to pay a CPA.

Our bylaws specify that all funds must be kept in accounts in the name of the association and not commingled. Our management contract says the same thing. So does the state statute.

There is definitely no commingling (until now, I've been seeing copies of the bank statements monthly).

As to the name on the accounts, I thought we were compliant because the name of the association is on the account, along with the name of our agent. I'll have to look into that more. I'll read back through the archives here.

We were established in 2007.

The bank account statement should read:

XYZ Association
c/o ABC Management
Address
City, Stae, Zip

As far as bank access, a board majority said no to access. That is something you need to take up with your board.

I manage a web portal for all my clients and homeowner financials and board financials are uploaded automatically by the 3rd of each month. My software will generate a board packet of 30 pages to up to 400 pages depending on the requirements of an individual HOA. The board's financials will come in two parts, one is actual bank statements and bank reconciliations, and the other has all the other financial information.

Max, Your system sounds excellent. Our community values low cost, so we have the least expensive MC we could find in our area. They were new at the time, and I believe they are developing all their own software. Hopefully, in time, their system will be as efficient as yours!

Thank you for the info regarding names on bank accounts.