Taking over a building from the previous manager: the first four weeks

Julia Hartwig runs a management practice in Hanover. On 1 January she takes over the association at Marienstraße 40, with thirty-two units, from a manager who is retiring. She receives a spreadsheet of owners, an export from his management software, twelve binders, the register of resolutions as a PDF and the reserve balance on a sheet of paper.

As handovers go, that is a good one; many turn out worse. What follows are her first four weeks in Condomana. How to check an export from the old software for completeness before you rely on it is covered in detail in Getting your data out of your old software.

Week 1: master data, as a dry run first

Under Settings → Import Ms Hartwig picks the source format. There are three routes:

Her export comes from another system. So she takes the third route, reviews the proposed mapping and corrects two columns. Then she uploads the files, which can be CSV, Excel or ZIP, and clicks Analyse.

Nothing is written at this stage. What comes out is a dry run with a reconciliation report that shows what would be created, updated or skipped, and lists every row that cannot be imported, with the reason. In her case two ownerships point to units missing from the export. They are two garage parking spaces the previous manager kept in a separate list. She adds them to the source, analyses again, and only then confirms. Importing the same data a second time creates no duplicates.

Besides buildings, units, owners and shares, the import takes over ownerships with their dates, tenancies, opening balances at cutover and historical settlements. The first settlement therefore builds on real figures and does not start from zero.

Data health

Next she opens Settings → Data health. There Condomana looks continuously for gaps and contradictions and gives each building a score. Marienstraße starts at 71:

• The co-ownership shares add up to 1,002 instead of 1,000. Here the page deliberately offers no fix, because a changed share changes what an owner pays. Ms Hartwig decides that with the declaration of division in hand.
• There are two records for the same person, once as an owner and once as the contact for a community of heirs, both with the same email address. She merges them in one click.
• Twenty-nine owners have no portal access. She deals with them in week 3.

Nothing is changed silently. A finding she has checked and accepted she dismisses, and from then on it no longer counts against the score.

Week 2: the paper history

She has the twelve binders scanned. Instead of uploading each file separately, she uses Import in bulk and puts the whole history in as one ZIP, optionally with a manifest.csv that says where each file belongs. Condomana processes every file on its own, so a damaged file does not abort the run. Anything that could not be classified is named explicitly in the report, without guessing. Everything is virus-scanned before anyone can download it, and afterwards it can be found by full-text search, as far as the files contain text.

None of this is shared with owners yet. Ms Hartwig chooses deliberately what they see: the declaration of division, the last three sets of minutes, the insurance policies and the latest economic plan go to all owners, and everything else stays with the team.

Continuing the register of resolutions

She enters the old resolutions under Resolutions with Record a resolution, each with date and wording. New resolutions from Condomana follow on in sequence. In Germany the register of resolutions has to be kept under § 24 (7) WEG. After a takeover it is asked for sooner than any other document, at the latest by the first buyer examining a flat.

Week 3: bringing in the owners

Now it is the turn of the twenty-nine "no portal access" findings. On the Data health page she invites each owner straight from the finding with Invite to portal. The invitation is a link that works once and expires, and anyone who does not respond gets one automatic reminder. Invited owners cost nothing.

The Portal column on the association's management page shows her each owner's state: On portal, Invited, Invited · reminded, Not delivered or No access. Two addresses show "Not delivered", and she sorts those out by phone.

At the same time she publishes an announcement. It says who the new management is, how to reach it, and that the most important documents are now in the portal. Owners who have already signed in find the declaration of division and the minutes there and do not need to call.

Week 4: day-to-day operation

What remains are the things the previous manager kept in his head:

• For the lift and the heating she sets up Maintenance plans with interval and contractor. Condomana assumes no statutory intervals, so she enters each one herself.
• For the caretaking contract and the building insurance she sets up Deadlines, entering the notice period and not merely the end date.
• She invites the colleague who co-manages Marienstraße under Team as a manager.

The test almost nobody runs

At the end of week four Ms Hartwig downloads a full export under Settings → Export. It contains all master data, ownerships, tenancies, opening balances and settlements as CSV in the same format the import reads, plus every document in its original form. She has no plans to leave. But she has just seen what a handover looks like when nobody checked beforehand that the way out works. The export is available regardless of subscription status.

The essentials

• Analyse first, then confirm: the dry run shows every row that does not fit before anything is written.
• Data health finds what the handover left out, and it never corrects anything that moves money on its own.
• The paper history goes in as one ZIP, and sharing is a deliberate choice.
• An invited owner has not yet signed in. The portal status per owner shows who is still missing.