Your association may be larger and you decided you will get more attention by hiring a community manager directly. Some refer to this as an in-house manager, an onsite manager or like in Florida they refer to it as Manager managed – as opposed to Management Company managed. This manager though may not be able to do all the tasks themselves. A larger condo community or homeowners association with an in-house manager plus financial help may be the perfect solution.
How did your community get here? You may have chosen this route to receive more attention: complete focus on your community versus splitting a manager’s attention among a portfolio of properties. You may have found a superstar and want to hold on to them and keep them all to yourselves. Or you may have calculated that employing a manger directly is cheaper for your community over hiring a management company.
Problems
The manager may be a superstar, they may be able to jump tall buildings in a single bound but….
They may have an “old school” approach. They may be a notepad and pencil type, they may be a spreadsheet person and can get by. But they may not know about the latest online tools and how to provide online owner payments, online bill approval for boards or better communication tools that will make both boards and owners happier.
They may be getting close to retirement age and want to slow down. If you can reduce their workload they can hang in there and help your community for a few more years.
The manager may not have time to do all work themselves. Like many associations maybe your community is older and you hired an onsite manager to help with capital projects. Maybe you have a lot of amenities for a site manager to help oversee. They may not have the time to open up invoices, data enter invoice and payment info into an accounting system and all the other related accounting tasks as well.
Doing accounting work may not be their strong suit. They may be great with working with the board and owners personally, solving problems and meeting vendors. But accounting tasks may not be their strong suit.
You may think you need to hire an onsite accounting person in addition to your onsite manager – but that adds a significant expense.
A Solution
You don’t have to hire an onsite accounting person instead you can hire a company that specializes in community financial management. This service will send out assessment reminders, deposit monies, pay bills and provide timely and accurate financial reports.
Onsite Manger Tools – The onsite manager will have direct access to the software systems. They will be able to view up to the minute accounting information. They will also be able to use the other functionality of the software like work order tracking, violation and architectural review management. The manager can also use email and mailing services to make their job of communicating easier.
Board Tools – the board will also get access to view accounting information straight from the software like current aged delinquencies. The board Treasurer (and President if wanted) will have a login to review and approve all bills (after the manger approves them) before they are paid. All board members could be given access to view and research invoices in the system and be given access to view the operating bank account to see deposits, payments and current balances. If additional management software functionality is used they can also see the status of work orders, violations and architectural review items.
The service includes doing the work and the management software cost (your choice of 2 industry leading alternatives: Tops or Caliber). Most communities in this situation will have a separate contract directly for the financial management service.
Community Financials has a plan to help large scale communities. If you want to explore further how a condo community or homeowners association with an in-house manager plus financial help may work for your specific community schedule a free consultation.