Year-end in an owners' association: from the invoice pile to each owner's statement in the portal

Anja Petersen does the accounts for eleven associations at a management practice in Kiel. The largest is Förde-Blick, with twenty-four units. Her year-end used to look like this: in January two binders of invoices on the desk, in March the settlement in a spreadsheet, in April twenty-four individual statements printed, put in envelopes and posted, and in May an owner on the phone because he has mislaid his.

This article walks through the same year-end in Condomana — from the first invoice to the moment an owner opens his statement in the portal himself.

Up front, so no false expectation arises: Condomana has no bank connection and keeps no receivables ledger. Account balances, unpaid contributions and reminders stay in your bank and your accounting. Condomana keeps the booking journal per property and settles from it.

January and February: the invoices

Invoices arrive by three routes, and each has a shortcut:

• By email to the organisation address. In the message thread, Record as booking files the invoice as a document and opens the booking form with the PDF beside it.
• As a PDF on the computer. On the Bookings page Ms Petersen drops the file into the form.
• On paper. Scan it, then as above.

With the AI features switched on, Condomana reads out the supplier, invoice number, amount and date, and suggests a cost type from the property's chart of cost types. Two checks run alongside without AI: a warning when the same invoice has already been captured — even under another property — and one when the amount lies far above what was usual for that cost type. The warnings block nothing. Nothing is booked until Ms Petersen checks, corrects and saves.

The cost type is where she looks closely. It determines the distribution key, and the key determines who pays. Why AI may suggest it but never set it is in AI invoice capture.

Bookings go by payment date. She takes the payments themselves from the bank statement and records them in the journal. Where an invoice belongs to a defect — the repair of the circulation pump, say — the manager links the booking on the defect, so the defect shows what it cost.

The reserve

Condomana keeps the maintenance reserve as its own balance. A contribution is a cost type that feeds the reserve and is apportioned to the owners like any other cost type. The circulation pump was paid from the reserve by resolution: that expense lowers the reserve and is not apportioned a second time. The withdrawal names the resolution that authorised it.

March: tidy up, then compute

Before computing the first draft, Ms Petersen opens Settings → Data health. A unit without an owner or co-ownership shares that do not add up would otherwise stop the settlement at a less convenient moment. Förde-Blick scores 100.

Under Annual settlements she picks the year and clicks Compute draft. Condomana apportions the actual costs per unit by each cost type's key — co-ownership shares, equal per unit, living space, or a custom key — and sets them against the target advances from the advance payment schedule. Rounding is cent-exact by the largest-remainder method, so every split adds up to the last cent.

The page also shows the difference between target advances and the income actually booked. That difference is arrears, prepayments or other income. The settlement itself works with the target figures; arrears you follow up in your accounting.

She reviews the draft unit by unit under Details and goes through it with the advisory board before it goes to the assembly.

April: resolution and approval

In Germany, since the reform, owners no longer resolve on the settlement as a whole but on the additional contributions and the adjustment of advances (§ 28 (2) WEG). What that means for wording the resolution is in The annual statement: from booking to a resolution that holds.

After the assembly Ms Petersen clicks Approve and enters the resolution's number from the register. From that click on, the settlement, its lines and every booking in the period are immutable. What owners receive can no longer quietly change — not even through a booking added by mistake in June.

Each owner's statement in the portal

With approval, each owner's own statement appears in their portal under Annual statements: their share of every cost type, the advances, and the balance that follows, also as a PDF. They see only their own units, and nothing before approval. An announcement tells the association the statements are ready.

The owner who calls in May because he has mislaid his statement no longer exists. The one who does not understand a line still does. If the organisation has switched on the AI features, he can ask the assistant in the portal, which answers from the documents that owner may see and from his own approved settlement figures — never a neighbour's.

If the individual statements are still produced in another program, they go out through serial distribution: one PDF per owner, Condomana proposes the recipient from the content, and nothing is delivered until you confirm.

Statement of assets

After each calendar year owners receive the statement of assets — in Germany, the report § 28 (4) WEG requires. Condomana computes it from the reserves and the year's bookings: balance at the start, contributions, withdrawals, balance at the end, with every movement. On approval it is frozen and filed as a PDF every owner can open.

It also says what it does not cover: account balances and unpaid contributions come from your accounting, because Condomana has no bank connection.

When the tax auditor comes

The tax audit export produces, for a period, an archive of the booking journal, voucher index, cost types, distribution keys, settlements and economic plans as CSV files with the descriptive index file an audit tool expects — for German properties in the data-handover format under § 147 (6) AO.

And already next year

In the same pass Ms Petersen budgets the following year per cost type under Economic plans. When the assembly approves the plan, the approval writes the advance payment schedule per unit. A one-off measure such as the gutters runs as a special levy, apportioned by a key of her choice.

What Condomana does not do here

No bank connection, no payment matching, no reminders. And no operating-cost statement for letting owners: the individual statement is the owner's account with the association, not the landlord's account with their tenant.

The essentials

• Invoices are read, not booked. You decide the cost type, because it decides who pays.
• The reserve is its own balance; an expense from it is not apportioned twice.
• Approved means frozen. The settlement and the period's bookings do not change afterwards.
• Every owner fetches their own statement — after approval, and only their own.