Plain-English guides for committees running their own strata scheme — without a strata manager. Written from the questions real treasurers actually search for.
When a treasurer leaves and takes the only knowledge of the bank account and books with them, a self-managed scheme can lose financial control fast. This guide walks a committee through regaining access, rebuilding the records, and making sure it never happens again.
Every self-managed scheme runs two funds. This guide explains what each is for, what you can and can't spend from it, and the fund names and rules that change from state to state.
A 10-year capital works forecast turns guesswork about future levies into a plan. Here's what it needs to cover, when it's compulsory, and how to build a workable one yourself.
Chasing arrears is a duty, not an option — but it has to be fair and consistent. Here's an escalating reminder process, when interest applies, and the steps before debt recovery.
Setting levies is really three jobs: a defensible budget, a fair split by unit entitlement, and honest communication. Do all three and a levy rise stops being a fight.
Fund balances, income and expenditure, and getting them into a format owners will approve. Here's what the annual statements have to show, how to build them from your records, and where schemes trip up.
The sum insured on your building policy is only as good as the valuation behind it. This guide explains what an insurance valuation is, why it's different from a market appraisal, how often your state expects one, and what happens at claim time when the figure is out of date.
Fire safety is the compliance obligation where a missed box stops being paperwork and becomes personal exposure. This guide sets out the essential safety measures the owners corporation must maintain, the annual statement or report your state requires, who's qualified to sign it, and what actually happens to the committee if it lapses — with the per-state specifics that catch self-managed schemes out.
Self-management means no strata manager quietly diarising the renewals for you. This guide maps the recurring obligations — AGM, insurance, valuations, safety checks, tax — across the year so nothing lapses, with the per-state timing that trips committees up.
A by-law is only worth the paper it's on if it was passed the right way, registered, and stays inside the limits the law puts on it. This guide covers the special resolution you need, why an unregistered by-law binds nobody, what a by-law legally can't do, and how to enforce a breach so it actually sticks.
Strata insurance covers the building and the scheme's shared liability — not what's inside anyone's lot. This guide explains what your scheme is legally required to insure, how to set the sum insured so a claim actually pays out, and where the building policy stops and an owner's own cover begins.
Your committee can decide some things on its own and must take others to all the owners. This guide draws the line — what each meeting can legally decide, and what happens when a committee oversteps.
Everything a first-time strata treasurer needs before the AGM: accounts, notices, agenda and what happens on the day.
Not every strata decision needs the same majority, and getting the threshold wrong can void a resolution months later. This guide explains ordinary, special, and written resolutions — when you need each, the majority required, and how to count votes without tripping over the rules.
An AGM with no quorum can't make binding decisions — and small self-managed schemes miss it constantly. This guide covers how quorum is worked out, how proxies help you reach it, and the fallback rules when the room is still too empty.
Minutes are the legal record of what your scheme decided — not a transcript of what was said. This guide covers what must go in, how to word motions and results so they can't be misread, and how long to keep them.
The boundary between a lot and common property decides who pays for every repair in the scheme — and it's the single most argued-about line in strata. This guide explains where that boundary usually falls, how to read it off your own plan, and how to handle the classic grey areas: windows, balconies, pipes, tiles, and floors.
A cheap quote from an unlicensed contractor is the most expensive way to fix a building. This guide covers the part of a repair that a strata manager used to handle: how many quotes to get, how to write a scope so they're actually comparable, what to check before you hand over the scheme's money, how to approve the spend within your authority, and how to put it in writing so the committee is covered.
A leak, a cracked path, a dead light in the stairwell — someone reports it, and now it's the committee's job. This guide walks a common property repair from the first report to the paid invoice: how to triage urgency, confirm it's actually the scheme's to fix, get quotes, approve the spend without overstepping your authority, and keep records that hold up if anyone asks.
A roof replacement, a full exterior repaint, concrete repairs to the façade — these aren't repairs you approve at a committee meeting and forget. They're projects: tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, months of disruption, and a general-meeting vote you can lose. This guide walks a major work from first sign to final sign-off — scoping it, funding it, getting the approval right, and staging it so owners come with you.
A stain spreads across a downstairs ceiling; the owner above swears it isn't them; the committee is caught in the middle. Water leaks are the most litigated repair in strata precisely because the damage appears in one place and starts in another. This guide sets out how to trace a leak to its source, who pays for the investigation and the repair, how insurance and the damage make-good fit together, and how to stop a moisture problem becoming a two-year dispute.
By-laws, certificate of currency, roll of owners, and minutes — the documents a self-managed scheme must keep, where each legally needs to live, and how long to hold them.
The treasurer's job doesn't start with the books — it starts with getting access to them. This is a week-by-week plan for chasing down bank authority, insurance, the owners roll, and the records in your first month, before anything falls through the cracks.
Self-managing means the committee does the strata manager's job — not that the legal obligations go away. This guide lays out the real tradeoffs and the thresholds where self-management is the right call, and where it isn't.
Getting the banking and bookkeeping right at the start saves years of pain. Here's how to open accounts in the scheme's name, keep the two funds separate, and set up records that stand up to any audit or handover.
Sacking your strata manager is the easy part. The hard part is getting every record, dollar and password back so nothing falls through the cracks. Here's how to make the handover clean, in the right order, with nothing left behind.
Most owner-versus-owner disputes never need a tribunal — they need someone on the committee who knows when to help, when to stay neutral, and when the scheme has no business getting involved at all. This guide sets out the committee's real role, a low-friction way to resolve conflict early, and the formal path for the disputes that don't settle.
You've sent the reminders, offered the payment plan, tried the quiet word and the mediation — and one owner still won't pay or won't comply. This guide picks up where the fair process ends: the two separate formal paths (debt recovery for money, breach enforcement for conduct), what each actually costs in time and goodwill, and when it's worth pressing on versus letting a professional take over.
Pets, parking, and noise are the overwhelming majority of what lands in a committee's inbox — and the ones committees most often get wrong, because a by-law can't restrict as much as owners assume. This guide covers what each of these by-laws can and can't legally do, why blanket pet bans and 'no visitors' parking rules keep failing at tribunals, and a single fair complaints process that works for all three.
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