The annual statement: from booking to a resolution that holds

The annual statement is the work a condominium management practice is judged on. It is also the one where a mistake surfaces latest and costs most: it surfaces when thirty owners hold their statement and one of them checks the arithmetic.

This article walks the path from the individual booking to the resolution, with particular attention to the point most often got wrong since the German WEG reform.

The path, in four steps

1. Bookings. All year: income and expenditure, every document assigned to a cost type. That is the foundation, and it is where quality is either created or not. A statement is never better than the assignment of its documents.

2. Cost types and distribution keys. Every cost type has a key by which it is apportioned across the units: by co-ownership share (Miteigentumsanteile), equally per unit, by consumption, or by a separately resolved key. The key decides who pays — it is the most important setting in the whole system.

3. Apportionment. The year's costs are apportioned per cost type by its key. This has to come out cent-exact: the sum of the individual shares must equal the apportioned total precisely. Rounding differences are not a detail; they are exactly what an attentive owner finds.

4. Comparison. The apportioned costs are set against the advance payments made. The difference per unit — the Abrechnungsspitze, the balancing amount — is either an additional contribution or a credit.

The point many get wrong since the reform

Until the 2020 reform, owners resolved on the annual statement as a whole. That is no longer the case.

Under § 28 (2) WEG the unit owners resolve on the collection of additional contributions or the adjustment of the resolved advance payments — that is, on the balancing amount, not on the figures behind it.

This is not a formality:

• The subject of the resolution is a different one. A resolution reading "the 2025 annual statement is approved" no longer addresses what is to be resolved. It is therefore open to challenge — not because the figures are wrong, but because the vote was on the wrong thing.
• The agenda has to support it. What is announced in the invitation must match the resolution.
• The statement itself remains an account of stewardship. It is presented to the owners and explained; what is resolved is the additional contributions and the adjustment of advances.

Word the motion accordingly. And because a great deal hangs on the exact wording, this is one of the points where a specialist lawyer's eye genuinely pays for itself — this article does not replace one.

The asset report

The second point that came with the reform and is easily overlooked in practice: § 28 (4) WEG requires the manager to prepare an asset report (Vermögensbericht) after the end of the calendar year, showing the state of the maintenance reserve and a statement of the material common assets. It has to be made available to the owners.

It is not part of the statement and not the subject of the contribution resolution — but it is mandatory, and its absence is one of the points certain to come up in a challenge.

Why approval has to freeze things

A statement that can still change after the resolution is not one.

The case is mundane and happens constantly: the statement is resolved, and three weeks later a prior-year booking is corrected — a misassigned document, a credit note arriving late. If the statement reacts to that, the figures in your system diverge from the ones the owners received. Nobody notices until somebody lays two printouts side by side.

Approval therefore has to freeze the statement and the bookings underneath it. A correction that becomes necessary afterwards belongs in the current year, not retroactively in the closed one.

Condomana is built that way: approval freezes the annual statement and its bookings. The figures owners received can never quietly change. The same principle applies to the economic plan and to special levies — what is resolved stands.

The most common errors in the statement itself

Costs in the wrong year. The cash principle applies: what matters is when payment was made, not when the service was rendered or the invoice issued. The December invoice paid in January belongs to the following year.

Reserve not cleanly separated. Contributions to and withdrawals from the maintenance reserve must be identifiable. A repair paid from the reserve must not additionally be apportioned as a current cost.

Ownership change during the year. If a unit was sold during the year, the statement has to say who bears which part. That presupposes the system records since when somebody is the owner — the field most often missing in data migrations. More on that: Getting your data out of your old software.

Rounding that does not add up. Thirty units and twenty cost types produce six hundred divisions. Without a procedure that distributes the rounding remainder deliberately, a few cents go missing — and they appear in the statement.

Consumption-based costs. Where heating costs are billed by consumption, the values come from the metering service and their allocation follows its own rules. What comes out of the metering report is carried over, not recalculated.

A timetable that works

The only point where real time can be saved is the first. Capture documents continuously and you have a statement in January; stockpile them and you have a box in January.

Quick check before sending

1. Sum of apportioned costs = sum of individual shares, cent-exact?
2. Every cost type apportioned by the key actually resolved for it?
3. Reserve shown separately, withdrawals not apportioned twice?
4. Ownership changes during the year apportioned correctly by time?
5. Asset report prepared and enclosed?
6. Motion worded as additional contributions and adjustment of advances — not as "approval of the statement"?

Point 6 is the one that takes the least work and is missing most often.