What a separate account changes
One account per building, in the building's name. Why it is the first thing to ask any management company, and what it makes impossible.
Of everything a management company can promise, one thing can be checked on day one: whether your building’s money sits in its own account, in the building’s name, or in the company’s account together with every other building it runs.
What a shared account allows
If the money of twenty buildings is in one pot, the company can pay building A’s lift with building B’s contributions and nobody sees it. The statement you get is whatever the company writes. When the company has trouble, every building has trouble. When it closes, the pot closes with it.
What a separate account makes impossible
With one account per building, the bank statement is the building’s own record. Every euro in came from an owner of this building; every euro out went to a provider working on this building. The committee can see the account, and the monthly statement is a reading of it, not a story about it.
It also makes leaving simple. The account belongs to the building. If the committee changes manager, the account stays, the balance stays, and the new company gets the same statements the old one had.
What to ask
One question to any company, ours included: is our building’s money in an account with our building’s name on it, and can the committee see it. If the answer takes more than a sentence, you have your answer.
What we do
Every building we take on gets its own account in the first week, before the first contribution is collected. The committee signs the account papers; we do not hold the money in ours. The balance is the first line of every monthly statement, and every owner sees the same number.
