This template applies the four-block method: THE THINGS, THE LINKS, THE STATES, THE NUMBERS, to a building run by its own owners rather than by a professional agent. It is filled in for an eighteen-unit building: the example shows how to describe charge calls and payments without getting lost in special cases.
The volunteer manager sits in a spot the market serves badly. Professional tools are built for a firm handling dozens of buildings, with the regulated accounting and client invoicing that go with it; the owner who runs the building at weekends needs neither. They need to know who has paid, what is broken, and where the budget stands.
To adapt it, start from your own reality: how the building is split into units, your expense headings, your billing rhythm (quarterly in the example, sometimes half-yearly). Describe the normal course of one financial year; the exceptions will slot onto a sound structure.
Filled in with your own words, this text works as a brief for a developer: or as a description submitted as is to Blueprint Maker, which turns it into an application plan to approve and then a generated application: database, records and lists, dashboard and demo data. A tool the next volunteer manager will find intact, with exportable code if the building wants to keep it.
The template to copy
What I do: volunteer manager of an 18-unit residential building, one financial year per calendar year, quarterly service charge calls. THINGS tracked: - Units (number, floor, type flat, cellar or parking space, ownership share) - Owners (name, email, phone, correspondence address) - Charge calls (quarter, financial year, total amount, issue date, due date) - Payments (amount, date, payment method) - Issues (description, location in the building, date reported) - Works (contractor, date, amount, expense heading) LINKS: - A unit belongs to an owner. - A charge call is issued to an owner for a unit. - A payment settles all or part of a charge call. - A work order answers an issue. STATES of a charge call: issued, paid, partly paid, overdue. STATES of an issue: reported, quote requested, in progress, resolved. NUMBERS to see every morning: - Owners up to date and owners overdue - Amount called and amount collected for the year - Open issues, including those with no quote yet - Year-to-date spending by expense heading
Adapting this template to your building
- Ownership shares: keep them as a field on the unit rather than a separate entity. They exist to split an amount across units, which is a calculation, not a thing to track.
- Several units for one owner: the link “a unit belongs to an owner” already covers it. Someone who owns a flat and two cellars appears once, with their three units attached.
- Billing rhythm: replace “quarter” with “half-year” or whatever yours is. The structure does not change, only the word does.
- Voted works: if you track a project voted at a general meeting, add a “Project” entity (title, voted amount, financial year) with a link “a work order belongs to a project”. Do not turn it into a disguised expense heading.
- Stay on operational tracking: building accounts are regulated and have their own dedicated tools, as do the minutes of general meetings. This tool tracks who has paid, what is broken and where the budget goes, not the ledger or the minutes.