Assets and reserve study
Record your depreciation report, seed a component registry from it, and turn the whole thing into a projection that tells you whether the reserve is enough.
Assets & reserve study is where a depreciation report stops being a PDF and starts being a plan.
The page does three things: records the study, holds the component registry, and produces the reserve projection.
Setting it up
The top of the page is three steps, each marked done once it is:
Upload the study
Upload the depreciation report under Documents and set its type to Depreciation / reserve study. Once it's there, the step links to it.
Record its details
Record details asks for the provider, the status, the report date (the date on the report, not today) and the next due date. This drives the depreciation deadline on your compliance calendar.
Build the component list
Extract it from the study, or add components by hand — below.
Correcting the study on file
Once a study is recorded, the button reads Update details, and it edits that study in place — a wrong report date or a missing provider is corrected, not duplicated. A genuinely new report, five years on, is recorded from the depreciation report item on the compliance calendar, which files it alongside the old one.
Get the report date right
Remaining lives in the registry are counted from it, and the next depreciation deadline is calculated from it. A date that's a year out moves both.
The component registry
A component is a physical thing that will eventually need replacing, with a cost and a date. Roof, elevator, boiler, parkade membrane, windows, balcony railings, corridor carpet, intercom.
For each one you record:
| Field | Why |
|---|---|
| Name | What it is |
| Category | Groups it for filtering — see below |
| Replaced every (years) | How long it lasts when new |
| Remaining life (years) | How long until it needs doing — counted from the year the figure was written down |
| Replacement cost | Current dollars — update it as prices move |
A component needs both a replacement cost and a remaining life to count in the reserve projection. One missing either is still listed, marked Not recorded, and counted by nothing.
Seeding from the report
With the study uploaded, Extract from study reads it and drafts the component list for you to review. Review what it added and remove anything that doesn't apply.
Seed it — don't type it
A registry built from memory will have five components in it and will produce a projection that looks wonderfully healthy. A registry seeded from the report has everything the professional found, including the things nobody on council knew about.
Categories
Categories are offered from one list — Site · Structural · Building envelope · Roofing · Interior finishes · Mechanical · Electrical · Plumbing · Elevating devices · Fire and life safety · Amenities · Other — both to the extraction and as suggestions when you add or edit a component by hand, so the same thing lands in the same bucket however it got there.
They're suggestions, not a fixed choice. A category that isn't on the list — Marina and docks, say — is kept as you wrote it. Extraction files near-identical wordings under the list's version (Structure becomes Structural, HVAC becomes Mechanical), but components already in your registry keep their existing wording until someone edits them.
Finding things in a long registry
A registry extracted from a report can run to ninety rows, so it's a table you can narrow:
| Control | Offers |
|---|---|
| Search | The component's name and category |
| Category | The categories in use, plus No category |
| Due | Already past · within 3, 5 or 10 years · more than 10 years · no remaining life |
| Figures | In the projection (both cost and remaining life recorded) or Missing figures |
| Sort | Soonest due, costliest, or name A–Z |
A component with no remaining life is never swept into a dated window — it isn't far away, it's unanswered, which is what the No remaining life option is for. Missing figures is the one to run after an extraction: it lists exactly the rows the projection can't see.
Each row shows the year it's due and how far off that is. Due soon marks anything within three years; Overdue marks anything whose year has already gone by. On a phone the table becomes one card per component.
When a component is due
A remaining life is counted from the year it was written down, not from today. A component extracted from a 2021 report that gave it 2 years left was due in 2023 — and if you're reading it in 2026, it's shown as Overdue, not as due in 2028.
- Extracted components count from the study's report date.
- Added or edited by hand, a new remaining life counts from today. Changing the name or cost of a component doesn't move its year — only changing the remaining life does.
The page says how old the figures are — counted from your depreciation report of 2021, so they are 5 years old — and how many components have passed their year. Overdue components count as needed now in the projection, not as negative time.
An old report makes the recommendation go up
Counting from the report's own year means a stale study puts more work inside the planning horizon, so the recommended contribution rises. That's the honest reading: the work the study expected hasn't gone away because the years passed. Review the overdue rows — schedule the work, or correct the figure if it's been done.
Correcting a component
Every row has three icons:
- Pencil — edit the component in place. A cost read crookedly out of a study table is a correction, not a delete-and-retype, and editing keeps the component's link to the study it came from (which matters for s.96(b)).
- Wrench — raise a work order for it. The job is filed on your Maintenance page with the component already attached.
- × — remove it, after a preview of what's being removed.
Keeping it current
- When work is done, correct the component's remaining life (and cost, if it changed). A roof replaced this year shouldn't still show as due.
- Raise the work from the row. A work order raised with the wrench is linked to its component, which is what connects the plan to what was actually spent.
- Revisit costs annually. Construction costs in Canada have moved sharply; a 2019 replacement cost is not a 2026 replacement cost.
- Add what the report missed. Studies work to a scope. If you know about something, add it.
Reserve work and the majority vote
CRF spending normally needs a 3/4 vote; work recommended in your most current depreciation report needs only a majority (s.96(b)). When a work order is linked to a component that came from your current study, the job page says so beside that choice. A component from a superseded study doesn't count. Whether the report actually recommends this work is still the council's call — see maintenance.
The reserve projection
Once some components carry both figures, the Assets & reserve study page shows a Contingency Reserve Fund (CRF) projection above the registry:
Due in 5y
$730,000
Balance today
$248,000
Annual need
$96,400
Recommended/yr
$96,400
It's study-based: the replacement costs coming due within the planning horizon (five years in BC), less the reserve balance today, spread over those years.
Set the Reserve (CRF) contribution takes you to the budget, where the same recommendation sits beside the reserve line you're setting. The compliance calendar scores the reserve lines in your adopted budget against it — not the figure on this page. What to do with a shortfall is covered in contingency reserve fund — raise the contribution, re-time the work, raise a levy, or borrow.
A projection is a model
It assumes today's costs, today's estimates, and today's contribution. Real buildings surprise people. Use it to see the shape of the problem and to compare options — not as a promise about 2041.
Using it at a meeting
This page is the most persuasive thing a council has when asking owners for money. A special levy presented alongside the projection reads as an unavoidable consequence of the numbers. The same levy presented on its own reads as a request, and gets treated like one.
Owners can see the corporation's compliance status, including whether the depreciation report is current. Publishing the projection alongside it — in the AGM package or as an announcement — is worth doing.
If you have no report yet
You can still build a registry by hand. It's better than nothing and much worse than a professional study: it will miss things, and the things it misses are the expensive ones.
If you're in BC with five or more lots, you're required to have a report anyway, on a deadline that depends on your regional district. Start there. See depreciation report.
A yearly rhythm
| When | Do |
|---|---|
| With the budget | Review the projection; set next year's contribution against it |
| When work completes | Correct the component's remaining life; make sure the work order is linked to it |
| Annually | Refresh replacement costs |
| Every 3–5 years | New study, per your province; record it from the compliance calendar and re-seed |
Still stuck? Open Support in the top bar of the app, ask the Assistant, or contact us.