Keeping the register of resolutions right

Of all the duties of a condominium manager, the Beschluss-Sammlung — the register of resolutions — is the most thankless. It costs time continuously, nobody notices it positively, and its absence has no consequence for years — until exactly one of three moments: a challenge to a resolution, an ownership change with a thorough buyer, or a change of manager.

Then it is suddenly the most important document in the building.

What the statute requires

§ 24 (7) WEG requires the manager to keep a register of resolutions. Its defining features:

Consecutive numbering. Entries are numbered consecutively. Gaps are not a cosmetic flaw; they are why the register loses its purpose. A third party has to be able to see that it is complete, and a register with holes proves exactly the opposite.

With the date. Every entry carries the date the resolution was passed.

Kept without delay. Not at year end, not before the next assembly. The resolution is entered after it is passed.

What belongs in it. Resolutions passed in the assembly, resolutions passed outside an assembly by circular procedure, and the operative parts of court decisions concerning those resolutions.

Noted, not overwritten. If a resolution is challenged, set aside, or amended by a later one, that is noted. The original entry stays. A register in which entries can be corrected no longer documents what was resolved, only what is meant to apply today — and that is an entirely different piece of information.

Open to inspection. Every unit owner may demand to see it. In practice: you must be able to produce it at short notice, in presentable form, and complete.

The four mistakes you see again and again

1. It is caught up on rather than kept. The most common case. After the assembly the minutes exist, and the register gets "done when there's time". Two assemblies later somebody reconstructs from minutes what should have arisen continuously. The content may be right — it did not demonstrably arise the right way.

2. Circular resolutions are missing. Resolutions from the assembly reliably reach the register; the ones passed in writing in between often do not, because they arise in a different folder. They belong in it just as much.

3. Numbering is issued by hand. And therefore issued twice, skipped, or reissued after a correction. When a human types the number, the gap is only a matter of time.

4. Old entries get corrected. A resolution is challenged, somebody edits the entry so that "nothing wrong is in there". That renders the register worthless as evidence: it no longer shows what was resolved, but a tidied present.

Why the numbering is the real crux

All four mistakes share one root: the register is a second document somebody has to maintain, in parallel with the place where resolutions actually arise.

Anything maintained twice drifts apart. Not through negligence, but because assembly season lasts two weeks and the register is the task you postpone.

The answer is not more discipline. The answer is that there is no second document.

If resolutions arise in the same place the register is kept, the register stops being a work step and becomes a view. The number is issued when the resolution is passed, not when it is written up afterwards. It can then be neither duplicated nor skipped, because nobody types it.

That is exactly how Condomana is built: every assembly resolution is recorded automatically as soon as it is passed; a circular resolution runs through the same engine and lands in the same register. A number once issued is never reused. Entries are append-only — challenges, court decisions and corrections are noted, never overwritten. And the whole register exports for a handover.

The change of manager

This is the moment that reveals whether the register was kept.

When taking a building over, the predecessor's register is the most important document you request — more important than the accounting, because you can reconstruct figures and you cannot reconstruct the state of resolutions. Without it you do not know what applies in this community: which house rules were resolved, which structural alterations were approved, which deviating cost apportionment was agreed.

Two practical notes:

• Request it in writing and document that you did. Otherwise an incomplete register becomes your problem later, though it was never yours.
• Check the numbering for gaps before you take over. Five minutes of work, and you know what you are inheriting.

In the other direction: when you hand a building on, a complete, exportable register is the fastest way to close a handover cleanly. That too is an argument for a system that keeps it anyway.

When the register has gaps

The realistic case, because it is common: you inherit a register that is incomplete, or you discover your own is.

There is no elegant solution, but there is an honest one:

1. Reconstruct from the minutes, as far as they reach. Assembly minutes are the primary source.
2. Mark the reconstructed part as such. An entry created after the fact is not the same thing as one kept contemporaneously, and the register should show that distinction.
3. Keep it properly from the cutover date on. A clean restart with a documented prior history is worth considerably more than the attempt to assert a gapless history that does not exist.

What you should not do: invent numbers to close gaps. A register that looks complete and is not is worse than one that shows its gaps.

Quick check

Five questions to put to your own register, for every building you manage:

1. Is the last resolution of the last assembly entered — and when was it entered?
2. Are the circular resolutions of the past twelve months in it?
3. Are there gaps in the numbering?
4. Where a resolution was challenged, is there a note — and is the original entry still readable?
5. Could you produce it in full tomorrow morning if an owner asked?

If you hesitate on more than one, that is where going digital pays off first — not the accounting. How it fits into an order: the honest roadmap.