Budgets

The budget is what strata fees are calculated from and what owners approve at the AGM. It's also the yardstick every financial statement is read against — and in ManageStrata it's where the fee run and the reserve contribution both come from.

FinancesBudget.

How the page is laid out

On a wide screen the page is two columns. The left is everything that changes the budget, in the order the work happens: the line items, the AI draft, budget against actual, the fee schedule, and the reserve transfer. The right is a rail that stays put as you scroll, holding the operating, reserve and total figures and the single Approve & adopt budget button.

So the number and the thing that changes it are side by side: edit a line and the totals in the rail move with it.

Building one

1. Create the budget for the coming fiscal year

   Your fiscal year comes from corporation settings. If it's wrong, fix it before you start.

2. Add the lines

   Add line opens a drawer: fund (operating or reserve), category, amount. One line per expense category — insurance, utilities, landscaping, cleaning, management, repairs and maintenance, professional fees, contingency contribution. Use the same categories you record expenses against, or the year-end comparison won't line up.

3. Fix what's wrong in place

   Every line has Edit, which opens the same drawer with the values in it. A mistyped amount is a correction, not a delete-and-retype — which matters most on lines imported from the AI draft, where the category wording is the proposal's own and is what lets the adopted budget be read back against it.

4. Include the reserve contribution

   The contribution to the contingency reserve is a budget line like any other — fund reserve — and it's the one owners most need to see. Base it on your depreciation report, not on last year's number. Reserve fund →

5. Council reviews, then owners approve

   The budget goes to the AGM and is approved by a majority vote. Running a meeting →

6. Adopt it in ManageStrata

   Approve & adopt budget shows you exactly what's about to be adopted — every line, both fund totals — before it commits. Adoption locks the lines and is what the rest of ManageStrata reads.

The AI draft

CouncilAI budget drafting is included on the Council plan and above.

Rather than starting from a blank page, ask for a draft proposal. It reads your actual spending history, your reserve position and your component schedule, and proposes a budget with a figure and a rationale per line.

Then Use these N line items carries the draft's figures into real budget lines, so nobody re-keys a proposal they've just read. It tells you what it's adding — so much operating, so much reserve — before you press it.

The import is deliberately literal. A figure it can't read as one unambiguous annual amount — a range, a percentage, a per-month figure — is skipped rather than guessed, because a missing line is obvious on review and a misread one looks exactly like a real budget line. Check the totals against the proposal and add anything it left behind by hand.

Imported lines land as a draft: edit them, remove them, add to them. Importing is not adopting.

Once lines exist the proposal collapses behind Read the proposal — by then it's the record of where the figures came from, not the thing you're working on.

From the budget to the fees

Monthly strata fees on the same page turns the adopted budget into what each lot actually pays: its share of the operating budget and the CRF contribution together (s.92), divided by unit entitlement (s.99), billed monthly.

The basis is not a setting. Section 99 sets it as unit entitlement, and s.100 allows any other formula only by unanimous vote filed at the Land Title Office — so unlike a special levy, there is no equal-split option here.

The table lists every lot with its entitlement, its monthly fee and its year. Before adoption it's a projection; once the budget is adopted a billing button appears, named for the month it's about to bill — Bill March fees.

A few details worth knowing:

• The month is chosen for you — the next month of the fiscal year not yet billed. Pressing twice cannot bill the same month twice, and when all twelve are done the page says so.
• You see the run before it posts. The confirm step lists each lot and its amount, and totals the run.
• A year of billing lands a few cents off the budget. A monthly fee has to be a whole number of cents paid twelve times. Where there's a difference the page states it rather than hiding it.
• Each lot's annual share is allocated exactly and then divided by twelve — never the reverse — so two identical lots can't drift apart over a year of rounding.

Getting the contribution into the reserve

A strata fee is one payment covering both funds, but it's billed as a single invoice against the operating fund — Form B certifies the newest fee invoice as the lot's monthly strata fee, and splitting it would state half the real figure to a buyer.

So the money all lands in operating, and the CRF's share only reaches the reserve when you move it. Reserve fund contribution, below the fee schedule on an adopted budget, is where that happens: adopted for the year, moved so far (with a months-out-of-twelve count), still to move — and a button that moves the current month across.

The year's contribution is split into twelve instalments that sum to exactly the adopted figure, and each month can only be moved once. The transfer and both ledger legs post together or not at all.

Lines worth extra attention

Insurance. The most volatile line in Canadian strata budgets over the past several years. Get the renewal quote before you finalise; don't extrapolate from last year.

The reserve contribution. The line most often set too low, because it's the only one that doesn't cause an immediate problem when it is. Under-contributing today is a levy tomorrow, and owners rarely thank a previous council for the saving.

Repairs and maintenance. Look at three years of actuals, not one. A quiet year is not a trend.

Utilities. Rates and consumption both move. If you've changed anything about the building — lighting, boiler, occupancy — that shows up here.

Professional fees. Legal and accounting are lumpy. Budget for a normal year and be explicit that an unusual one will need discussing.

Actual against budget

Once a budget is approved, the financial statement compares real spending against it, line by line.

Review it quarterly at council, not just at year end. A category tracking 40% over in month four is a problem you can still do something about; discovered in month twelve it's just a number in a report.

When you're going to overspend

It happens — a failure nobody planned for, an insurance renewal well beyond forecast.

1. Work out the real number

   How far over, and whether it's timing or a genuine increase.

2. Take it to council with options

   Reallocate from an under-spent category; defer discretionary work; draw on the reserve, checking which approval it needs — see below; or raise a special levy.

3. Tell owners before they find out

   An announcement explaining a variance costs nothing. Discovering it in the year-end statement costs the council its credibility.

What approval does a spend need?

BC gives a precise answer where "your Act and bylaws" would leave you guessing. The budget page carries this table with your own figures filled in, tucked into a disclosure in the right-hand rail so it's there when the question comes up without sitting between you and the work.

The second row is worth dwelling on: a current depreciation report drops recommended work from a 3/4 vote to a majority vote. That is a direct, recurring financial reward for having one, and one of the better arguments for getting the report done rather than deferring it.

Note that the s.98(2) cap is the lesser of the two, not a flat $2,000. For a corporation with a $20,000 annual operating contribution, 5% is $1,000 — and that is the ceiling.

Mid-year changes

An approved budget is what owners agreed to. If circumstances change materially, the honest path is to explain the variance and, where it needs owner authority — a levy, a significant unbudgeted project — put it to an SGM. Quietly spending past an approved budget is how councils lose votes.

If owners reject the budget

A defeated budget does not stop billing, and councils often believe it does.

Under s.104 the corporation continues collecting strata fees at the previous year's rate. It must propose a new budget and hold an SGM on it within 30 days. In the interim its spending is restricted to recurring expenses within the previous budget's limits (s.106). So: keep billing, book the SGM, and don't start anything new.