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There might be differences between state and territories legislations about how specifically detailed the financial reporting must be. Where I am (ACT), the Act does not specify financial reporting to be as detailed as you describe. It sounds like what you have in your papers would be sufficient. On this our Act just says: “For a notice of an annual general meeting, the notice must include a copy of … the annual financial statements of the corporation to be presented at the meeting … the general fund budget.”
I was treasurer of our OC for quite a few years. Our managing agent’s software produced reports that any committee member could access electronically at any time. One report ‘Income and Expenditure’ showed totals for expenses against each line of the budget, so for example, we might have a line for ‘tree maintenance’ and a budget of $12,000 and part way through the year we could see that we had spent $2,345 of that budget. Another report ‘Account Payments’ had a breakdown of every payment. That report might show that the $2,345 was comprised of two separate dated payments to a tree surgeon with short descriptions. ‘Tree surgery’ might be one and ‘tree removal’ might be another.
As treasurer, I would include the final Income and Expenditure report in the financial papers presented to the AGM but I did not include the Account Payments. On one occasion when a predecessor did include Account Payments, the meeting bogged down in minutiae such as why there was a payment of $23.86 against one line of the budget but then -$23.86 appears lower down. [Answer: the managing agent put a payment in the wrong spot and the treasurer asked to have it moved to the right category of spending.]
As treasurer, I found it more useful to owners to present a more user friendly ‘Treasurer’s Report’ that would draw attention to and explain anything unusual, that explained what was covered under some of the less clear budget line names, and commented on over or underspending on some lines and gave reasons for changes in the proposed budget for the coming year. Eg. I might write something like ‘This year we removed one substantial tree and engaged a tree surgeon to remove limbs from another that were overhanging a unit. Although these works did not use all of our budget for tree surgery, the proposed ‘trees’ budget for next year remains at $12,000 because we anticipate further work will be required along the southern boundary of the site.’
As an owner, you are entitled to view any of the records of the OC, so you could ask for a copy of the Account Payments report to be sent. If the managing agent and/or committee don’t want to send it to you, you can at least demand to view it at the office.
As for levies, another report that the managing agent’s software produced for us was ‘Unit Balances’. The managing agent should be able to tell the meeting if everyone is up to date with their levies. If they are not doing the accounting to keep track of that, what are you paying them for?!
The Act also says (Again, this is in the ACT, what you have might be similar or different) “A notice of a general meeting for an owners corporation must state … whether the person notified is entitled to vote on all (or any) motions at the meeting, and if not, why not … Note Section 3.20 explains who is entitled to vote on which kinds of motion. For example, if an amount is owing to the corporation in relation to a particular unit at the time of the general meeting, no vote may be cast by the unit owner (or anyone else) for that unit on any motion requiring an ordinary or special resolution.” So, clearly it is up to the committee or managing agent preparing the meeting notice to know if anyone is in arrears. I would expect there are similar provisions and expectations elsewhere. The managing agent should be able to say if an overdue levy payment has been received before the start of a meeting.
When I was treasurer, I generally omitted the ‘Unit Balances’ report from the financial reporting for the meeting and instead just included a statement that everyone had paid their levies and was therefore entitled to vote. Sometimes there was a little bit of sleight of hand in choosing to do that. We usually had a handful of units with unit balances that were listed in arrears but the amounts were trivial, usually less than $10. This happened because sometimes people would have paid their last levy exactly as they were asked to on their levy notices but did so slightly late. The consequence was that their account would have a month or two’s worth of penalty interest applied that they did not yet know about. It did not compound and would be included on their next levy notice and then generally paid. It was not worth chasing those owners for a few dollars that would be received soon enough. Clearly these people had paid their levies and it would have been unreasonable to deny them voting rights over what was often a matter of cents to a few dollars. Since there was ‘An amount was owing to the corporation’ and we had one pedant who would have insisted each year that a handful of people should be disenfranchised on account of owing trivial amounts, it was better, I thought, to say ‘All are up to date with their levies, so all can vote’ and leave the Unit Balances report out of the meeting papers.