Webinar - Record Keeping: Strategies and Digital Solutions

Welcome to today's webinar titled Record Keeping: Strategies and Digital Solutions. 

My name is Rebecca Woelfle, and I'm a customer marketing specialist at Condo Control, and I'll be your host and presenter for this session. Our other presenter and guest speaker today will be Heather Francis. She is a senior property manager at GPM Property Management. Also joining our session today is Condo Control senior customer success manager, Juliette Hunter, who will be on hand to answer questions in the q and a session.

Before we get started with the webinar, I just wanted to provide a few reminders. This webinar is being recorded. A follow-up email will be sent to all registrants with the recording link once it becomes available. And after the presentation, we will have a formal q and a session. If you do have any questions, please submit these into the Zoom q and a at the bottom of your screen, and we will do our best to get to as many questions as we have time for.

For those attending that reside in Ontario, just a reminder that this webinar has been approved by the CMRAO as a learning activity for 1.0 CPE credits. After the webinar, upon leaving the Zoom meeting, a survey will automatically appear in your browser to gather any feedback you may have. 

 On our agenda for today, we will start by really discussing the importance of accurate record keeping and common record keeping challenges faced by those working in property management. We'll then go through the benefits of using digital solutions like Condo Control for record keeping and streamlining the documentation process.

After that, our guest speaker Heather Francis will provide her perspective on some of Condo Control's most useful features in record keeping and how these have been helpful in her property management experience.

And finally, we'll go over some best practices to record keeping and have the formal q and a session.

Let's start with going over why is record accurate record keeping important? Well, ultimately, for successful property management operations and effective record keeping ensures, compliance with regulations and legal requirements, thereby reducing the risks of audits or legal disputes. So in the context of property management, this also really instills trust among unit owners and residents.

Accurate record keeping is also important for ensuring efficient operations. So, proper record keeping really saves time in retrieving information and facilitates collaboration among team members for smoother operations. And it can also lead to increased productivity, reduced errors, and better financial management.

 

Now we will conduct a poll. Our question today is how do you primarily store and manage your property management related records?

 If you're joining us, please select an option from the following list, and we will just give everybody a minute or so to answer this poll, and then we'll go through the results in a second. So, as you can see, one of the options is other. So please specify in the Zoom chat if there is another method of record keeping for your property management related records. Please do put that in. It looks like leading so far is property management software. That's nice to see. We also have local digital storage. 

And we'll just give another thirty seconds or so. Interesting mix here. A few more seconds, and then we will end the poll. Thank you very much, everyone. The poll has now ended.

With the results here, we've got 42% property management software like Condo Control, and then in second place, local digital storage, like computer hard drives.  Thanks, everybody. Let's continue.

With this slide, just wanted to go over really some of the common challenges faced in property management, record keeping, and documentation processes. With so many documents to keep track of and share, it really is a challenge to keep organized. So, firstly, managing and updating owner and tenant information such as contact details, common element fee payments, and other payment histories really requires meticulous attention to detail and organization.

Second here, we have accurate financial record keeping as could be a challenge, including expenses and budgeting. It really is crucial to keep on top of these because errors in financial records can lead to significant issues, which may include cash flow problems and tax complications. Another challenge is organizing and storing the various documents, including contracts and legal documents in a way that they are easily accessible and retrievable when needed.

As we saw in the poll, many property managers still rely on paper records and even the most organized teams find it challenging to locate meeting minutes or an old contract in a cabinet full of manila folders. And in condo and HOA record keeping, the paperwork can really pile up quickly. Paper records can also be easily lost, damaged, or misfiled.

So transitioning to the digital systems can really be helpful in this case, and we'll go over that in in more detail later. And there are multiple drawbacks and inefficiencies to the manual documentation which I'll go over in the next slide here.

Traditional documentation processes can pose significant challenges and risks that hinder the efficient record keeping practices. So manual data entry here, it's prone to human errors leading to inaccuracies and records and potentially impacting decision-making processes. Document misplacement. So physical documents really are at risk at being lost or misplaced, causing delays in accessing that critical information, and then affecting property management operations.

And then without proper version control, it can really get difficult to track the document revisions, leading to confusion over the most up to date information and potential compliance issues. And noncompliance, with laws and regulations could lead to legal issues, fines, or penalties. And just want to go over, in this slide here, residential communities produce hundreds of documents every year and many of those records must be archived. And there are a lot of documents that need to be kept and many of them for a long time.

So as a result, the record files they grow quickly compounding over the years and depending on your location. Just to preface this, this is Ontario specific, but it's very important that you check the legal requirements of your record keeping and make sure you're complying with regulations. In the United States, for example, laws will differ state to state in terms of record keeping accountability.

In Ontario, the Condominium Act states that a number of documents need to be kept for set time limits. For example, condos must keep documents like board and owners meetings, seen here for an unlimited amount of time, declarations, performance audits, and more.

Documents like financial records, status certificates, or director disclosures must be kept for at least seven years. So as you can see, the documents can really pile up and with years and years of these documents, many corporations look to switch from paper to digital solutions to manage it all. And if you'd like to learn more, specifically about the Ontario Condo Act. The Ontario condominium act can outline online more information.

So next, with that, we'd now like to go over some of the benefits of using digital solutions like Condo Control for record keeping. So, you know, digital solutions can really help to streamline the documentation process and offer several benefits. So firstly, automated tasks. So, you know, automation really helps to reduce those manual errors and is a huge time saver.

So, with Condo Control, for example, it can accept payments, automate records, and email necessary parties immediately. As an example, it's really great for vendor management, providing an automated process for approving and paying invoices. Next, enhanced security features and digital solutions. These really protect sensitive information from unauthorized access or data breaches. So it's also very secure because parties can access the documents through a single centralized system.

And then also record keeping software makes it easy to stay organized and access files. So real time access to data allows for those instant updates and collaboration. So instead of sorting through the file cabinets, you can use dynamic search tools and digital applications to quickly find and share documents.

And you can store important documents under a number of parameters so that they can be found in seconds or minutes and by searching the document type, owner names, and more. And then finally, some other benefits, not shown directly on the slide, but for digital solutions, other benefits include cloud storage, digital archiving, and enhanced search functions.

Next, I am going to pass it over to our guest speaker, Heather Francis. She has over ten years of experience managing properties in Ontario, and she will discuss her experience in using, a digital solution like Condo Control for record keeping and how specific features have, you know, really helped her save time and enhanced her documentation processes. Alright, Heather. Over to you.

Thank you, Rebecca. So Rebecca has provided us with a really helpful review of both the necessities for proper record keeping and a summary of the benefits of using a web-based application in order to meet those objectives.

As a property manager, I think we've all learned, if you are a property manager, how important documentation and anytime I run into trouble, it's because records haven't been kept well. And the most critical thing and important thing in helping with that is having an organizational structure and a management tool that can save you time, to maintain all of those records.

Generally speaking, property managers and boards of directors have the same objective. And when it comes to record keeping, they're looking to save time, save money, facilitate information transitions when directors change or when a new property manager takes over a site. They wanna be able to easily access past history documents. And in this day and age, it is ideal to be able to do all of those things from anywhere. And a web based application like Condo Control can really support all of those objectives.

So one of the key things that can help save time and money when it comes to printing costs is the file library. And Condo Control offers a file library where you can add folders and, enhance it as little or as much as you want for your owners and for your board of directors. Different preferences can be set up so you can control who gets to see what kind of information.

When it comes to owners, they generally have a right to see a lot of documents. As long as you're in corporation. They might be the rules and regulations for the corporation. Instead of having to field phone calls and emails from your owners asking for copies of these documents, creating a file library, and then asking for copies of these documents, creating a file library and then educating your owners and directing them to the file library on the web based application can save you time in printing costs.

It's a central location, for documentation for the board of directors as well. So I've used the file library with the board of directors where we've set up, location to keep documents when we're doing research or when we're looking at a project or general information about our community so we have one place that we can go and look at that. And that leads me into a module that Condo Control offers that I really like, and that's the task module.

It might be a project module in another application, but tasks is where you can open up something specific that you have an objective to achieve. So for example, if I have the objective of doing a hot water riser replacement project in my building, I can open up that task, and that task becomes the central repository for all information related to the hot water project.

That includes providing quotes to the board. That includes the ability for the board to respond to questions or comments in that single task. That centralizes approvals because you can even have voting in that task, which makes it easier when you go to prepare your board meeting agenda and have to ratify an approval. It is a place for CCDC contracts or agreements with contractors.

It can provide a central location to do a postmortem after a project so that if you ever have to do it again, you've got a history of what happened. It's one location, and it saves you all the time from having to scroll through and search through emails, where email threads often deviate from the original subject line and go into a completely different tangent, and now you don't know what you're looking for anymore.

It can build your scheduling. It can set reminders. And when you go to have to do a hot water visor replacement project again in the future, you can go back to that task and see everything that happened before. Who was the contractor?

Maybe a different property manager who's at the site when that happens, and they will have full access to all of that history of that previous project.

It can reduce the amount of emails, and you can search. Condo Control, I know, in particular, has a really strong search feature, so you can search for a lot of different things and have instant access to that information.

I will also actually, if you can go back one second, Rebecca, is still on tasks. Sure.

I'm trying to give an anecdotal example of how task has been very beneficial in terms of a legal issue, in a condominium where lawyers tell you always when something comes up, document, document, document, document.

Having this task for specifically that legal issue has been so helpful in keeping all information related to that owner corporation issue in one place.

 

And every time we had to engage the lawyer, we were able to simply create a report of all of the items that were in that task related to the legal issue and send one whole file instead of having to sift through various emails and approvals and conversations that weren't within the task. It has saved time for the lawyer, and it certainly saved time for us. 

Unit file, our owners are the lifeblood of our condominium corporation. And the unit file, we all have evolved, hopefully, from having to sift through the file folders where that used to be the traditional location and method for keeping all of the owner information.

So if I needed to find an emergency contact, I would have to pull the unit owner file folder and rifle through pages and pages of paper in that folder hoping that they provided an emergency contact on a resident registry at some point. When you have a good database of unit files, it's an ideal location to keep all the information related to that unit. And that isn't just current owners, but that's also past owner information.

It's a great place to be able to keep your renovation requests. I know in Ontario, whenever we do a status certificate, which is, a document created that goes to the lawyers to make sure the new owner is getting all the information they need, it often requires a history of the renovations that were included for insurance purposes. When it's all on the unit file inside of Web-based application, that information is at your fingertips and easily to look up and add to your legal requirement for the status certificate.

You can include, any contact information, transfer deeds. So when there's new ownership, you've got a record of when that happened and who the new ownership is.

And it's also critical and helpful in terms of emergency, evacuation resident information. So if someone needs special help during an emergency, that you are able on a monthly basis to go in and just print that report. In Ontario, we have a fire safety plan requirement where any person needing additional assistance needs to be listed in that plan, and that can be quickly and easily updated and kept current.

From reporting standpoint, it saves so much time to be able to just run various reports, and I use these when I'm building my agenda for the board of directors, going to create a report on the types of incidences and service requests that have been submitted so that it can help the board set their priorities. So for example, if I run a report on service request and we identify that within a year, 80% of the service requests have had to do with pinhole leaks and water flooding in the units, I can take that information and include that in an agenda for the board to say, our reserve fund indicates a capital expenditure project for hot water riser replacements in five years. However, we've had all of these incidences of floods that are causing damage and inconvenience to our residents, and, therefore, it's an ideal opportunity to perhaps alter your capital expenditure project scheduling based on that information.

 

It helps with amenities to see how often amenities are being booked and where the board and property management can focus their energies.

Wonderful. Thanks, Heather. Let's now go through some of the record keeping best practices. And, Heather did go through a few things like the file library that I'll mention here. But, just in general, if you're not already using a digitized system, we greatly encourage shifting from paper to digital.

Transitioning to digital record keeping and automation, it really will help take care of menial tasks, improving access to information, and reducing the risk of data loss. So you can start by at least doing digital archiving, which involves storing historical documents in a digital format ensuring the long term preservation and easy retrieval.

It really helps in maintaining compliance, as I mentioned, reducing the physical storage costs and improving accessibility to documents. And it's not just the organization and maintenance of the records that improve when switching to digital, but the quality as well. By using digital record keeping tools, adding in other types of documentation can be easy. So at least with Condo Control platform, you can simply upload supporting images, files, videos, and more for certain types of records.

We also suggest implementing version control and digital tools can really help with this especially to help track document revisions, maintaining the accuracy, and ensuring that everyone's working with the most current and up to date version.

As Heather mentioned, the file library is a useful Condo Control tool to maintain and store  important community files and data. And the module offer also offers, as she mentioned, an upgrade with advanced in-content search functionalities that enable quick document retrieval based on certain keywords. So these advanced search algorithms means you can really get accurate relevant results instantly.

We also highly suggest that you develop and enforce standardized procedures for document creation, storage, and retrieval, like using templates for common documents such as bylaws, newsletters, or maintenance logs.

So just as an example for the file library, this is just what an example interface looks like. As you can see, in this column here, the different folders. And then on the right here, you can see example how organized you can be within the platform for organizing things like AGM materials, board meeting minutes, etcetera.

And just some more best practices here. So it is really important to conduct regular audits and updates of files and folders. And, and in particular, it can be challenging to keep track of things like board related documents given that high turnover of board members. It really is helpful to have that and important to have a central repository of records.

 

And then reporting. So as mother as Heather mentioned as well, this module is one where,  you can run reports on the usage and features in your community. And we all know, visuals help tell a story or in this case, you know, having a sense of what projects need to be worked on. Your community might need to identify what needs to be prioritized.

So providing data from reports can really help to justify those recommendations on which projects should be moving along faster or be prioritized for maintenance as well.

Alright. And for reports, here's just an example of the reports interface within the Condo Control platform. This all sectioned alphabetically. By default, the system provides a large variety of insightful reports to choose from. For example, there's a summary list of all vendors, amenity usage, announcement recipient information, etcetera. So these reports are categorized by feature for easy access.

Alright. So as we wrap up the presentation component of the webinar, let's just review some of the key takeaways that we all mentioned. The manual record keeping can really lead to more human errors, misplaced documents, and is, time is very time consuming and, those time consuming retrieval processes.

Benefits of digital solutions. So digital record keeping offers secure storage, ease of access, automated processes, and enhanced data analytics capabilities. And then effective file management strategies, organizing files systematically, using naming conventions, implementing the version control, and having standardized templates and procedures are important methods to keep in mind.

And implementing these strategies can not only help you be legally compliant following those regulations and so on, but can also be a great time saver and helping with, you know, increased productivity, reduced operational costs, improved data security, and better decision making for your community. That concludes the presentation component.

I want to promote our next webinar, which is HOA or homeowners association rule compliance essentials and this is scheduled for Wednesday, June 26th from 12PM-1PM eastern time. And you can register for this webinar by going to events.condocontrol.com. We also have a link in the chat directly to the event page, which you will see.

During this webinar, we'll cover topics like compliance issues, effective enforcement strategies, and useful Condo Control features such as violations tracking and architectural change requests. This webinar, just to note, will not be accredited by the CMRAO, the one in June.

Thank you so much, Heather, for being our guest speaker. But I want to begin now the Q and A session. So as we said, if you have any questions, please submit them in the q and a function Zoom at the bottom of your screen.

 

Okay. I will now start with the first question. Abel asks, how do we save under each unit? I only I see only note tab is available. Juliette, would you like to answer this question?

I sure can. So it depends on what you're saving, but you do have the option of saving other things like attachments, lease details, vacations, fobs, remotes, emergency contacts, other stuff like that is also available in the unit file as well.

Can I just add it may be that you just need to scroll over and see the different options, some, and depending on what your module is? I don't know if there are limitations to that there yet. Not for attachments. Which I would think.

The next question is from Joanne. How do you specify ‘versions’ and track them? Heather, would you like to answer this question? It's kind of a combination, and part of it doesn't necessarily have to do with Condo Control or a web based application specifically, Joanne. But it would be file naming conventions and making sure any files that you're doing or working on, are named with a version so that you know a date and a version of what you're working on. So let's say rules.

In the past, I've opened up a task for rules and regulations updates, which gives me a history and the ability to see what comments directors are putting in there to make changes. And then the file itself that we're creating of those rules and regulations would have a version name on it so that we know when it was created and when it was done and when it was adopted and when it was approved. I hope that answers that question, Joanne.

Our next question, thank you, Neil for your question. Has Condo Control developed functionality to ‘mirror’ a set of file structures on a hard drive? Think instead of manually uploading files one by one, you just save them to your PC and the software sees that and uploads it to the mere file structure on Control Control. Oh, Richard, I see you would like to answer this question.

Heather, would you like to talk with this one? Or No.

I don't think I can talk to this one because it's talking about an integration with Condo Control, and I imagine maybe your development team is working on something, but I don't know.

That is not something that's currently available. But thank you, Neil. 

Can I ask that or maybe ask a separate question regarding that, Juliette? Would be if, let's say, there was a whole bunch of documents that a corporation had on their own computer or in the cloud or something, Would you or someone at Condo Control be able to facilitate a more streamlined, faster way of kinda getting that data into Condo Control as an update instead of a one by one uploading of files to get them off the ground.

 

But you can upload multiple files at once. So that is a possibility. And to give you an example, this is not a service I generally do, but is under an extenuating circumstance, for a client. I was able to upload around 650 files in about twenty five minutes.

Mhmm. So, you know, it can be done fairly quickly. And I didn't do anything, like, in the background. I did it all, like, right in the workspace. Thank you.

Our next question from Joel. Would you further describe an audit of documents?

When I think of an audit of documents, what I'm thinking about is, for example, I open up a task every year when we do the audit, and I start putting in all the related documents that the auditor's requesting, the financials that they’re looking for and that way I have one location where all of that information is kept and can then therefore be referred to in past ones.

At a financial level, Juliette might be able to discuss within Condo Control if there's any financial records that can be generated that are used. I don't use the financial side of it because the property management company does all that, but I know that Condo Control does have some flexibility to manage the financial side as well.

Yeah. Absolutely. We do have an AP program that some clients are using with approval processes. It does, have the functionality where you upload invoices, which are approved that could be audited. It's all and it's also reportable. So I think that would be the best way, you know, if you were using the AP, would be producing reports, looking at those approval processes, making sure that everything is in line.

Alright. Next question from Joanne. How do you integrate service requests with tasks and maintenance functions?

I've never really integrated them before. In my own mind and within the corporation I work with, we kind of service requests are something that just needs a change of light bulb, you know, clean up, broken glass that was dropped at the front entrance.

A task is something that's sort of project related where it's an ongoing with a beginning, a middle, and an end objective, to achieve to achieve a goal as opposed to a maintenance type thing. And then there are the whole maintenance modules, and not everyone has all of these different modules. So I think in terms of, a task versus a service request, it's just sort of defining because I've certainly taken a service request that's come in and then created a task about it because that service request ended up opening up a can of worms where we all of a sudden have to redo the entire roof of the building because water is flooding into a unit, for example.

So you may take a service request, and it may initiate a task, which is a bigger project with beginning, middle, end approvals, quotes, contracts, all that kind of stuff.

 

Thank you, Heather. This question comes from Roland. Should the industry have a unified filing system?

Yes. It should. Will it? I don't know. At one point, I remember not too long after ours started about twelve years ago. I remember that ACMO rolled out this whole ‘all file folders need to be green if it's financial and white if it's a unit file’. And they went to a lot of effort to create these standards in the paper hard copy world of property management.

I have not seen anything like that roll out in terms of creating standards within the digital world. And given that if you ask two hundred people how they would name a file, you're gonna get two hundred different answers. I don't know if there ever will become a standard for that.

But it would certainly be helpful if at least, the condominium industry set what are the standard categories that you should always have information on? Your unit files, your financials, your contracts. But I don't know if that will be at a higher level than what we're able to do. But I can say that if ever something like that rolls out, Condo Control or similar board based application would be an ideal way of ensuring that you are matching those recommended industry standards.

Okay. Next question from Colin. Why do you think that there is less risk of error when using Condo Control rather than paper? Surely, you can make mistakes digitally as well. I think I think more than errors or data entry is gonna happen, data entry is going to happen.

But in terms of being able to recognize a mistake faster, I find that mistakes are recognized faster in the digital world, corrected faster in the digital world, and that they don't get repeated.

And when in the manual world or a nondigital way, you have pieces of paper all over the place, and one piece of paper might get updated with the correct contact number, but another piece of paper might not. And at any given time, you may not be looking at the right answer. Whereas if, for example, the unit file, you get told that the phone number in the system isn't working and it's the wrong typo, you fix it and, well, now that number's correct in the system and it's not gonna be a problem anymore.

And this question, by Karen Vere. When we register a new user, does Condo Control automatically send welcome email, or do we have to manually send the welcome email from the available tab, Juliette? 

It's automatic. Unless you have an integration, then you need to send the welcome email from the unit file. You want to explain what an integration is gonna be?

 If you have some sort of maybe integration, with Condo Manager or QuickBooks, Yardi, anything like that, then you would need to manually send it.

 

You'll also need to manually send it if, for example, I know that some in Ontario, I regularly have issues where someone who's with Rogers for their phone or for their Internet services, Rogers has decided randomly to all of a sudden stop blocking and then it's in Condo Control. So it'll work for six months, and then it'll stop. Condo Control can help you reset that, and then you would have to resend a welcome to get them reinitialized for their account.

Next question is from Giselle. Does Condo Control have a component that allows an owner to report an issue and track its status?

Absolutely. And that's where the education and driving usage of Condo Control from the owner side is great as well. So when you get your owners used to using the service requests, they can go in. They can say my window's broken, and it needs to be fixed, And that comes to the management office. I can then reply to that owner in that service request and let them know I've got your request. Thank you. I can subsequently follow-up with the day and time that the window company is coming to assess the window and measure it for replacement, and that service request can remain open and an ongoing dialogue back and forth with that owner until that issue's been resolved.

It's also great because you can subsequently generate reports from the service request so you can or see what kinds of service requests are the most common, be able to analyze, and, and figure out what kinds of things are going on.

Alright. Speaking of reports, our next question from Joel asks, can reports be sorted other than by alphabetically? Yes. That was mentioned in the in the presentation.

Juliette, do you know if there is another way of sorting the reports?

So right now, I'm just taking a quick look. They are sort of alphabetically, but they're also subdivided into category. Meaning so all the amenity booking reports are together, announcements, maintenance, security, concierge, they are together, and under their subs, they are sorted alphabetically.

Would your enhanced new search function be able to find something faster than having to look through alphabetically?

Right. So the enhanced search function actually searches within the documents itself. So, yes, absolutely. But that would only be in the file library.

Right. That would be only in the file library. Correct. So and I should preface this. As long as the document, is readable, like, sometimes, like, these old declarations, they're scanned over and over and passed over and over, and they become more and more difficult for to be read by any kind of OCR software. So that's also and that's gonna be for any search function software.

 

Next question from Robert. He says, my question is how do you ensure records are updated and maintained with the regular change in directors and property managers? Generally, what amount of time and cost are incurred?

I would say when you have a web based application like Condo Control, your costs are minimal.

It does require the management of knowing that you've just had an annual general meeting and you have two new boards of directors. And I know that I've developed a checklist for myself that's in line with the condominium industry for Ontario in terms of what things have to happen. And one of those is going into Condo Control and updating the director information in Condo Control. It's also in Ontario. We have to legally notify the condominium authority of Ontario who has to know that there are new directors and what their contact information is. So timing wise, I'd probably say it takes about an hour total to get all of that data updated the way you need it over several different areas.

It makes it easier when it's all digital. And, from a cost standpoint, negligible at best.

Thank you, Heather. Next question from Abul asked, we cannot upload multiple files under unit, but possible under library. Please correct me if I am wrong. Juliette?

Yeah. So, I highly suggest you contact your CSM and have that discussion and get that turned on that you can absolutely save attachments on the in the file itself. You don't have to save them in the file library.

Next question from Claudia. How can we add an amenity booking but not provide access to residents? We charge for move ins and outs, and we would like to be in control of the bookings.

That would depend. Like, if you had other amenities, you could switch off amenity booking to the residence and just do the bookings within Condo Control yourselves.

I would contact your CSM to discuss that further. We kinda need to know more about your building to properly answer that.

Let me take the next question from Albert. Can service requests be automatically forwarded to pre vetted vendors approved by the board for a specific work order?

 Right now, in Condo Control, no. However, maybe you could add your vendor to Condo Control, give them access to service requests, but then they would see everything, which could be a privacy issue. So, again, like, contact your CSM to discuss. We would need more information.

Can management refund amenities deposits through Condo Control/Stripe?

 

If you have Stripe, connected to Condo Control and if the resident doesn't want the booking anymore, to do the refund, you would just cancel in Condo Control. Either the resident can cancel if they have their permission, or you can cancel, and it will automatically, give the refund minus the stripe piece.

But, even after the fact, it was possible to get money back to there was, like, a way I could set up the system so that money could be reimbursed if there were no damages or it went back onto the card and I could release it, but also that I was able to work within Stripe to be able to reimburse funds even if it wasn't canceled. Possible to get money back to the owners through Stripe.

So a hundred percent. So if you have a Stripe integration, a what Stripe does is when the resident user makes the booking, Stripe if they to make the booking, they have to pay, the amenity booking fee. Let's say for a party room, let's say it's a hundred dollars. They have to make they have to pay the amenity booking fee right away, to just to make the booking and so it goes into Condo Control. Between 48-24 hours before the booking, Stripe will then take the deposit.

If they're using a credit card, it generally takes a deposit as a hold, much as the same way as if you were booking a hotel room, and that it would release the deposit between seven to ten days after the booking if there was no damages. If there is damages, you can go into your Stripe account. I didn't retrieve any monies that we require up to the amount that the deposit is.

Thank you, Juliette. Our next question comes from Lisa. If an owner rents their unit, is the tenant required to log in to Condo Control to submit contact info, emergency contact, vehicle information, et cetera, or is the owner required to submit that?

How I handle that is, the owner is, at least in Ontario, people are required to advise the management and the board that they are renting out their unit, and they, are required to provide a copy of the lease agreement and at least the initial contact information for who's renting that unit.

Subsequent to that, I do register them, online and set them up as a Condo Control user where they are able to update their contact information and all the other information.

But until the management office has received from the owner documentation confirming that they are renting it out and to whom they're renting out that unit, I do not recognize them as a resident and, subsequently, not as a tenant either. I hope that answered that question. 

Tina asks, have you considered having the ‘view ‘option of the attachment in the unit files instead of downloading them anytime we need to check information of such documents.

 

I love that question. And, Juliette, I hope you have an answer for it. I don't. That's a more of a dev question.

Is that something that can be flipped over to your development team. We can definitely give it a feedback. Really, really nice to have. We'll take that back as feedback for sure. Thank you. 

And if there are questions or, you know, things that we don't get to within the q and a today, in the post webinar email, we will include them, or have them directly, your CSM directly email you the answer to the question, depending on what it is.

Next one.

Karen Veer asks, what's the difference between logging single violation and multiple violations in the violation tracking tab?

So for a single violation would just be one unit. Well, multiple is if you have if you unfortunately have multiple owners, or residents in your building that are causing the same violation, you could log them all at the same time.

Hopefully, you don't have that, though. That would be helpful for let's say, I'm thinking right now, we're coming into spring, and we have a lot of balconies and patios right now that as  exclusive common element, they have responsibilities for maintenance of those things. 

So it's been a springtime cleanup, and it's easier. They're in violation of the rules and regulations, and you could do a multiple violation through that. Absolutely. Instead of doing one by one by one by one. 

Or another good one would be like  when people leave, like, holiday wreaths on the doors and stuff. Boots outside in the hallway. That's another good one. We just go on and on.

Alright. Thank you both. Our next question from Karen Vere. Can you please elaborate the damage deposit timeline from deduction to refunding the user?

Mhmm. So, with Stripe, 24-48 hours before the booking date, Stripe goes in and takes the hold. And as long as there is no damages, releases it about seven days after. The user who made the booking should see the hold released between ten to fourteen days in their in their bank account or in their bank statements.

But keep in mind we get a lot of questions, where managers have come to us and they say, well, they don't see the refund. There's no refund. It's a hold.

So it's just a hold on the monies. No monies is actually taken unless you go into Stripe and take the monies because they made damages to the elevator or the party room or anything.

 

Alright. We're gonna take just two more questions. First from Michelle. I took over a building who has hundreds of old service requests. Is there an easy way to delete all old ones?

No. They would have to be closed individually, but I would suggest review that with your CSM. 

And lastly, from Lola, can Condo Control set up a tab for board's file? Because this can be used for documents that the board can review prior to board meetings and also for the archive purpose. And when the PM uploads the documents, will the board members receive a notification by email kindly advise?

Well, I would say absolutely. In the file library, based on privacy and hierarchical permissions, you can set up a board only folder. And that could be, let's say, for all, board meeting agenda documents. So you could set up a folder with the date of your next meeting, and that's where all the attachments could go and where they would be able to access all of that. And based on the permissions granted for that folder, only the board members would have access to it.

Yeah. Hundred percent. And it would save you from printing out these enormous board meeting packages. Yeah. Absolutely.

I saw sorry, Rebecca. I saw that a couple people had hands up. I don't know if Richard took care of them or if they ended up putting in chat. So I don't know if they had questions because I saw hands up.

Anyone does have any other questions, please do feel free even reach out to customer success team as I have the contact information here or you could call us at 1-888-762-6636.

And you can also visit our website at Condocontrol.com. Alright, everyone. Well, we appreciate everyone joining us here today, and we thank you very much for your time and, and the participation in the q and a. We hope it was very helpful.

Just a reminder that after the Zoom meeting ends, a short survey will appear in your browser.

If you don't mind taking the time to fill us out, we would greatly appreciate your feedback. And also, if you're joining us from Ontario with the survey that pops up, please do make sure that you indicate whether you require us to send a certificate, so that we can get you the 1.0 CPE credits. Alright. Thanks everybody and have a great rest of the day.