#57364
TrulEConcerned
Flatchatter

    Good day Hyacinth,

    Welcome to my world. I have exactly the same issues as you have: being an owner but not on the committee and being denied information. And in my case, I discovered payments being made that were not approved by the OC as they should have been.

    After some argy-bargy with the committee and the managing agent, I recalled what I learned in first year accounting: two vital documents which every managing agent or committee treasurer have in their possession: the Cash Payments Journal and Cash Receipts Journal. These are listings of every single payment made by and receipt deposited into the strata’s accounts.

    Note: this does not include actual invoices, it is a list of money in and out of the strata’s bank account. And in my case and in that of a friend’s, in another strata, the listing does not reveal who was paid or who paid into the strata.

    That said, I suggest you ask for the following:

    Dear Managing Agent,

    Please email me the Cash Payments and Cash Receipts Journals for the strata for the period 1JAN21 to 30JUN21. I have been informed by NSW Fair Trading that I have a right to such information.

    Thank you.

    Once you have these documents, you can

    (1) Search the listing (which should be only a few pages long  for a strata of your size and a 6 mth period), establish what payments you want to look into further and then you can

    (i) cross reference a payment made by the strata to any payments approved by the committee at a meeting AND

    (ii) ask the agent for further information  on any given payment or receipt if the committee did not approve any payment at a meeting or if the approval in the meeting does not clarify, to your satisfaction, who was paid and why

    When you have listed all of your concerns for that those 6 months, email the agent with your queries PAYMENT BY PAYMENT and RECEIPT BY RECEIPT with a CC to the committee. Give them 10 days to reply.

    Once you receive your response from the agent or committee, I suggest you thank them and ask for a copy of the Cash Payments and Cash Receipts Journals for the strata for the period 1JAN20 to 31DEC20.

    NB: Sir Humphey is spot on when he states the hubs/portals  offer “high level” information only ie aggregated. This is of course no use to anyone who wants to know about specific payments or receipts. Case in point:  I could see that IN AGGREGATE insufficient levies were paid to a strata in a particular quarter. Such data is pretty useless really when I wanted to know who exactly was in arrears.

    Good luck.