Payments and expenses
Recording money in and money out — cheques and e-transfers against a lot, bills paid from either fund, and transfers between the two.
Two forms cover most of a treasurer's month.
Money in — record a payment
FinancesRecord payment, for a cheque or e-transfer received from an owner.
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Lot | Which lot the money is for. Get this right — it's the field that most often goes wrong |
| Amount | As received |
| Date | The date received, not the date you're entering it |
| Method | Cheque, e-transfer, cash, bank transfer |
| Reference | Cheque number or transfer reference — invaluable at reconciliation time |
The payment posts to that lot's ledger, reduces their balance, and appears in the general ledger against the fund.
Card payments record themselves
Where Stripe is connected, an owner paying online posts to their ledger automatically. You never touch it. That's most of the value of turning online payments on — see billing strata fees.
Enter the date received
Backdating to the actual receipt date is correct and important. It's what makes bank reconciliation work, and it's what decides whether a payment landed before interest started accruing.
When a payment would put the lot in credit
The confirm step warns you when the payment is larger than what the lot actually owes — when recording it would leave the lot with a credit balance. If ManageStrata can also see recent receipts of the same amount, it says so: "lot 01 already has 2 payments of $275.00 recorded today (as cheque, eft)."
That's the shape of the mistake worth catching. A receipt has no reference the system can key on, so nothing stops the same cheque being entered twice — and money recorded that the lot was never charged overstates the fund and puts a paid-up owner into fictitious credit, which only a correction can undo.
It warns; it never blocks. An owner prepaying a year ahead, two owners of one lot paying the same share, a re-issued cheque after a void — all real postings. Read the sentence, and if you recognise the payment, carry on.
What it won't catch
A lot deep in arrears paid the same amount twice stays in debit throughout, so nothing fires. That case is indistinguishable in the ledger from a legitimate catch-up — a council entering a year of back-history posts exactly that pattern — so the check stays quiet rather than crying wolf through every book migration. Reconciliation is what finds it.
Payments that aren't strata fees
Money for a special levy, a chargeback or a fine is recorded the same way, against the same lot. It settles the oldest outstanding charge on that ledger unless you direct it otherwise. If an owner is paying a specific invoice — a levy instalment while still in arrears on fees, say — note it in the reference so the intention is on the record.
Money out — record an expense
FinancesRecord expense, for a bill the corporation paid.
The decision that matters is which fund:
Operating fund — insurance, utilities, landscaping, cleaning, management fees, routine repairs. Anything recurring or ordinary.
Contingency reserve fund — the big planned replacements the reserve exists for: roof, elevator, boiler, envelope, parkade membrane.
Which fund is a real decision
Charging a reserve project to operating blows your operating budget and hides what the reserve is actually spending. Charging routine maintenance to the reserve drains the fund and may breach your Act. When it's genuinely ambiguous — a major repair that isn't quite a replacement — decide it at council and minute the decision.
Record the vendor, an honest description, the date and the amount, and link it to the work order or component it relates to where one exists. That linkage is what makes next year's reserve projection accurate — a roof replaced this year shouldn't still be counted as due.
Transfers between funds
Strata fees arrive whole in the operating fund, including the part that belongs to the reserve — a fee is billed as a single invoice because that's what a Form B certifies as the lot's monthly fee. So the CRF contribution only reaches the reserve when it's moved.
FinancesBudgetReserve fund contribution does that, a month at a time, and shows how much of the year's contribution has gone across so far. Operating goes down and the reserve goes up in one entry, both legs together or neither. Do it monthly with the fee run rather than when you happen to remember, so the reserve balance is always meaningful. More →
Categories and the budget
Expenses are categorised, and the categories are what your budget is built from and what the financial statement reports against. Categorise consistently: if landscaping is sometimes "Landscaping" and sometimes "Grounds", your budget comparison is fiction.
Reviewing what's been recorded
FinancesGeneral ledger shows every transaction in date order with a running balance per fund. It can be narrowed to one month — that is what the month rows on the statement's Month by month view link to — and the running balance stays the fund's real balance in a narrowed view rather than restarting from zero.
FinancesRecent payments shows what's come in lately — the fastest place to spot a payment credited to the wrong lot before an owner does.
Budget Watch flags the odd ones
On the Council plan, the Budget Watch agent reviews spending and flags what looks unusual — a category well over budget, a duplicate-looking payment, a fund running low — in plain English, for you to confirm or dismiss. See AI agents.
When something is wrong
Don't delete it. Every fix has its own recorded correction:
| Situation | What to use |
|---|---|
| Payment credited to the wrong lot | Move to another lot, with a reason |
| Cheque bounced (NSF), or keyed twice | Reverse the payment |
| Charge raised in error | Cancel invoice, with a reason |
| Expense against the wrong fund | Reverse and re-record correctly |
Full detail in fixing mistakes.
Still stuck? Open Support in the top bar of the app, ask the Assistant, or contact us.