The sudden crisis of the pandemic has driven home hard the need to be a financially sustainable residential community. Community sanitisation, establishing delivery kiosks, investing in new equipment to keep up sanitisation efforts are extra costs that have drawn attention to the significance of maximising revenue. In the fourth episode of the Neighborhoods of Tomorrow – Interactive Webinar Series, we saw participation from community leaders looking to grow their savings.
The Takeaways
Here are a few takeaways. To check out the complete presentation, click here.
Takeaway 1
COVID has caused expenses to increase anywhere between INR 20000 – INR 200000 depending on the size of the community. To this effect, streamlining of finances has become more important than ever before. It is important, therefore, to bring about discipline and seriousness about billing and collection of maintenance. Providing a well broken down legal bill on the first of every month or every quarter inculcates a sense of seriousness. Automation helps to generate updated bills taking into account arrears and late payment penalties. It also provides multiple options of instant online payment. This helps to reduce defaulters and ensures the collected revenue from maintenance is higher than the amount lost through defaulting.
Takeaway 2
Follow the Golden Rules of Accounting Best Practices to become cash rich society.
- Aim to be a Zero Cash Society
- Deduct TDS where relevant
- Have One Single Account for day to day operations. There can be multiple accounts for parking funds.
- Perform Bank Reconciliation regularly
- Obtain Audit Supervision as early as possible.
The Q&A Session :
Q1 : Can Repair Fund be used without a GBM approval?
A : A lot depends on planning. It should be agreed in the GBM that repairs worth a certain amount can be considered as day to day expenses and used without a case to case approval. However, repair amounts exceeding the agreed limit will require an approval. GBM approval is non negotiable when using Corpus or Sinking Fund.
Q2 : Do Labour Laws apply if apartment communities hire on their payroll?
A : Labour laws are not applicable for a workforce of maximum 12 individuals.
Q3. Can Society Accounting be made completely automated with a society management App?
A : Yes. During deployment once the chart of accounts is set up, all journal entries are made automatically. About 70% of General Ledger or Trial Balance is built up automatically. The software is capable of functioning independently to generate auditor approved formatted account balances at the end of each financial year.
Q4. How can society management apps promote transparency and cost optimisation?
A : No feature in ADDA is made to compromise on transparency. Every detail of every penny is available for scrutiny at all times. Asset Tracker, Income Tracker, Expense Tracker are simple modules that help in achieving the goal of cost optimisation.
Q5. How to motivate residents to be office bearers?
A : This can be done two ways :
- Establish a well oiled system that makes the job of office bearers easier and less time consuming.
- Recognise outgoing office bearers for their contribution to managing your community.
Q6 : Can ADDA accomodate automated differential billing?
A : Yes. ADDA can provide multi entity billing to users who are presented with more than one set of bill from multiple stakeholders.
Q7. Can records of accounts from previous years be migrated to ADDA from other software like Tally?
A : The data record can be uploaded as Admin files for easy recall. It is always suggested to take over audited account records only from previous office bearers or management bodies.
