Corporation settings
The five settings tabs — corporation details, financial controls, compliance reminders, the audit trail and your plan — and the ones worth getting right early.
Settings. Council and managers only.
Settings is five tabs, each its own page:
| Tab | What lives there |
|---|---|
| Corporation | Name, plan number, size, province of record, logo and brand colour |
| Financial controls | Fiscal year, time zone, automatic billing, arrears interest, closing the books |
| Compliance | Reminder emails, tracked duties, insurance renewal, depreciation region |
| Records | The audit trail |
| Billing | Your ManageStrata subscription, invoices and payment method |
Each tab is a real page with its own address, so you can bookmark the one you use and link a colleague straight to it.
Corporation details
SettingsCorporation. Name, province, strata plan number, lot count and address.
The corporation name and plan number print on statutory forms, financial statements and owner emails. Use the registered form — The Owners, Strata Plan NW1234 — not the building's marketing name.
Province selects the rule set behind your notice periods, vote thresholds, reserve requirements and forms. Changing it re-derives everything on your compliance calendar; don't do it casually.
Financial controls
SettingsFinancial controls — the four settings that decide what the finance screens are allowed to do.
Fiscal year start
The month your financial year begins. It need not be January: a corporation running July to June says so here, and every budget, statement and fee run walks the right twelve months. A fiscal year is named for the calendar year it starts in, so a July 2027 – June 2028 year is "2027".
Set the fiscal year before you enter transactions
Budgets, financial statements and closing the books all key off it. Changing the start month doesn't restate anything already posted — it only changes which twelve months future runs walk through — so change it at a year end if you have already billed part of a year.
Time zone
Which clock your books keep. Invoices, interest runs, imports and prescribed forms are dated by this zone rather than the server's, which is the difference between a certificate stamped today and one stamped tomorrow when a manager posts at 5pm.
Leave it on the provincial default unless your corporation has a reason not to — the default is right for almost everyone.
Automatic strata-fee billing
Bill monthly strata fees automatically issues each month's fees from the adopted budget with no one pressing a button, and emails council and managers what was billed. Off by default. Full detail: billing strata fees.
Interest on overdue strata fees
Your bylaw rate, in percent per year. Blank by default, and the blank is load-bearing: with no rate recorded ManageStrata will not charge interest at all, because BC permits it only where your own bylaws set a rate (SPR 6.8) and has no statutory late fee to fall back on. The field will not accept a rate above the 10% cap.
A rate entered today does not reach backwards
Passing an interest bylaw later does not make past interest chargeable. If your corporation has been carrying arrears without a bylaw rate, that interest is simply not recoverable — which is the argument for passing the bylaw at the next AGM rather than the one after. See arrears and interest.
Closing the books
Set the first date still open, usually the start of your current fiscal year.
Postings dated into a closed period are then refused, so a late correction lands in the current period instead of silently rewriting a statement owners already approved. Clearing the date reopens the books; both actions are recorded in the audit trail.
Full detail in statements and closing the books.
Compliance reminders
SettingsCompliance.
The highest-value switch in the product
With reminders on, the council is emailed 30, 14 and 7 days before every statutory deadline. Councils turn over and secretaries change; a calendar only helps if someone looks at it, and this is what makes someone look.
Turn it on in your first session. Reminders go to council and manager accounts, so keep the roster current — someone who left last year shouldn't still be the one getting warned.
The same page holds your insurance renewal date and which duties you track, plus one fact the product cannot work out for you.
Depreciation report region
BC phases the first depreciation report by regional district: Metro Vancouver, the Fraser Valley and the Capital Regional District are due 1 July 2026, the rest of BC 1 July 2027 (SPR 6.2).
Until you state which one you're in, the compliance calendar assumes the later deadline — it would rather be a year early than tell a Nanaimo or Kelowna corporation it's in breach while it has eleven months left. Set it once. Depreciation report →
The interest rate moved
It used to sit beside the reminders. It is now under SettingsFinancial controls, with the other settings that decide what the finance screens may charge.
Brand and logo
SettingsCorporation. Upload your logo and set a brand colour. Applied to owner emails, meeting notices, announcements and printed forms.
Worth two minutes: a notice that looks like it came from the corporation gets read; one that looks like a generic system email gets deleted.
Audit trail
SettingsRecords. A record of who did what and when, across the corporation. Money moved, invoices cancelled, roles changed, documents uploaded, notices sent, periods closed and reopened.
You'll rarely read it. It matters at exactly the moments when it matters a great deal:
- an owner questions a charge from two years ago;
- a council member wants to know who approved something;
- a dispute reaches a tribunal;
- an outgoing council hands over to a new one.
This is why shared logins are a bad idea
The audit trail records the account that acted. Four people sharing one login turns every entry into "somebody on council" — which answers nothing. Give everyone their own. See invitations and logins.
Data retention
Records are retained against your legislation's minimums. It isn't a setting you configure today — see privacy, data and retention.
Billing and plan
SettingsBilling — your plan, payment method, invoices, and current AI action usage. See plans and billing.
A settings checklist
Worth confirming once a year, ideally just after the AGM:
- Corporation name and plan number correct
- Fiscal year start correct
- Time zone correct, or left on the provincial default
- Lot count matches the register
- Compliance reminders on, going to the current council
- Depreciation report region stated
- Bylaw interest rate recorded, if your bylaws set one
- Automatic fee billing on or off deliberately, and this year's budget adopted if it's on
- Logo and brand colour set
- Prior fiscal year closed
- Plan still matches your lot count and usage
Still stuck? Open Support in the top bar of the app, ask the Assistant, or contact us.