Resident & homeowner associations

Service charge that reconciles, and arrears you can defend at an AGM.

A resident association bills the same amount to the same units every month, receives most of it, and then discovers at the AGM that nobody can explain the difference between what was billed, what was banked, and what the arrears schedule says.

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The problem

The billing is simple. The reconciliation is where associations lose control.

Service charge is one of the most predictable obligations there is: a fixed amount, the same units, every month. That predictability hides the problem, because it means the billing side almost never fails and attention never goes there.

What fails is everything after. Owners pay from personal accounts, company accounts, and relatives' mobile numbers. Tenants pay on behalf of landlords. One payment covers four units. A payment arrives with a unit number that was renumbered two years ago. Money for the sinking fund lands in the operating account.

By the time an arrears schedule is produced for the AGM, it has been reconciled by hand, it disagrees with the bank, and the owner who is being named in it has a bundle of mobile money confirmations proving otherwise. That meeting is where associations lose their committee.

Obligations

What this sector actually bills.

Zetu models each of these as its own obligation, with its own schedule, policy and aging — rather than collapsing them into one balance per account.

Monthly service charge
Monthly
The core obligation, per unit, usually by area or by a schedule in the by-laws.
Utilities recharged
Monthly, variable
Water, common electricity, refuse — a variable amount on a fixed schedule.
Sinking fund contribution
Monthly or annual
Restricted money that must not be confused with operating cash.
Special assessments
One-off
Roof, lift, borehole, repainting. Apportioned by a resolution and often paid in installments.
Reserve fund top-ups
Periodic
Raised by decision, tracked separately from ordinary service charge.
Late penalties and interest
Per period overdue
Provided for in the by-laws, frequently waived, and always disputed.
Parking and storage
Monthly
Attached to units, sometimes transferred between owners separately from the unit.
Transfer and consent fees
One-off
Charged when a unit changes hands, often the moment arrears are finally settled.

Reconciliation

Where the money stops being traceable.

The cases that consume the time. Each is a state an item can be in, with an owner and an outcome.

A tenant pays the owner's service charge
The payer is not the account holder, and the tenant may want a receipt in their own name.
One owner, four units, one payment
A single amount that has to settle four separate unit ledgers correctly.
Old unit numbers in the reference
A reference that resolves to a unit that was renumbered or subdivided.
Sinking fund money in the operating account
Restricted funds mixed with operating cash, and no clean way to prove they were not spent.
Payments during a handover
Money arriving while the unit is between owners, against arrears that belong to the seller.
A managing agent in the middle
Collections banked by an agent and remitted net, with the association reconciling against a summary.

Money you hold and cannot yet attribute is reported beside the money that is properly allocated, rather than disappearing into one figure. How reconciliation works covers the general case.

Month summaryService charge & levies · August 2026

Collected: 93.2%; of expected
Matched: 98.0%; of received
Open items: 7; awaiting a person

Expected: $96,800100.0%
Received: $90,20093.2%
Reconciled: $88,40091.3%
Needs review: $1,8001.9%
Outstanding: $6,6006.8%

7 to reviewReceived is not the same number as reconciled. The gap is the work.

Their side

Residents and owners get their own view of the same record.

Service charge disputes are almost always disputes about the record, and a resident who can open the record has nothing to dispute.

Service charge, utilities and any special assessment
Payments made, including ones a landlord made for the unit
Their position before the next AGM

Not a copy of your figures — the same obligations and settlements your team works from, read from the other end. How the portal works.

Following up

Arrears here have to survive being read out loud.

Association arrears end up in front of an AGM, a tribunal, or a conveyancing lawyer at the point of sale. The number needs a defensible history behind it: what was billed, under which resolution, what was received, what was allocated, what penalty was applied, what was waived and by whom.

That is a different standard from most receivables. It is not enough for the balance to be right today — it has to be reconstructible as at a date in the past, after two committees have changed and the managing agent has been replaced.

Zetu preserves obligation history rather than rewriting it, which is the property that makes an arrears schedule hold up when it is challenged.

The general machinery is on the collections page.

Worklist · overdue accountsSorted by next recoverable action

Overdue accounts with days past due, balance and the next action for each.
Account	Days past due	Balance	Next action
House 31 · L. KimaniResidentacc-4102	12	$320	Reminder queued
House 08 · S. AbdiResidentacc-4287	26	$320	Hold — payment in review
Ridgeline Property TrustLandlordacc-4415	61	$2,880	Promise due today
House 47 · G. WafulaResidentacc-4699	134	$1,540	Refer to committee — sinking fund

Showing 4 of 29 accounts

House 08 · S. Abdi — Paid $320 from a spouse's number with no reference. The amount matches this month's service charge exactly.
Ridgeline Property Trust — Promised $1,200 by 24 August across nine let units. Kept 2 of 2 previous promises.

How Zetu works here

From obligation to standing, in this sector.

Obligations attached to the unit

Service charge belongs to the unit and its current owner, so an ownership change moves the future obligations without erasing the arrears that came before it.

Variable recharges on a fixed cycle

Water and common utilities are computed per period and billed alongside the fixed charge, with the calculation retained.

Restricted funds kept distinct

Sinking and reserve contributions are their own obligations with their own reporting, so 'is the sinking fund intact' has an answer.

Assessments by resolution

A special assessment is raised once, apportioned by the rule the resolution specifies, and installment plans are recorded against it.

Payments matched across payers

Tenants, relatives, companies and agents paying on behalf of owners — matched to the unit, with the payer recorded as themselves.

Arrears with a defensible history

Every charge, penalty, waiver and payment on the unit, reconstructible as at any date.

Capabilities

What matters most for this sector

Service charge by unit, area or by-law schedule
Variable utility recharges with retained calculations
Sinking and reserve funds as restricted obligations
Special assessments apportioned by resolution
Installment plans on assessments
Penalties and interest per the by-laws, waivable with attribution
Ownership changes that preserve prior arrears
Tenants and agents as payers, owners as account holders
One payment settling several units
Parking, storage and ancillary obligations
Arrears schedules reconstructible as at a past date
Owner statements that a non-accountant can follow

Zetu is not a full property-management system.

This page is about the money: obligations, settlements, arrears and standing. Maintenance workflow, inspections, tenancy management and the rest of estate operations are a different product, and several exist that do them well. Where an association needs both, Zetu is the financial layer rather than the whole operation.

Questions

Common questions

Can we prove the sinking fund is intact?

Sinking and reserve contributions are separate obligations with their own settlement history, so what was contributed, over what period, by which units is a report rather than a reconstruction. Whether the cash is intact is a banking question — but the contribution side, which is where most disputes actually start, is answerable.

What happens to arrears when a unit is sold?

They stay attached to the period and the owner they arose under. Future obligations move to the new owner from the transfer date; the prior arrears remain visible against the unit and the previous owner, which is precisely what the conveyancing inquiry will ask for.

Our managing agent collects on our behalf. Does that work?

Yes, and it is worth doing carefully. The agent is a payer remitting on behalf of many owners, so the remittance has to be broken down to unit level to be reconciled properly. Where the agent remits net of fees, that difference is visible rather than absorbed into an unexplained shortfall.

Bring your arrears schedule.

The one you last took to an AGM. We will show you what reconciles against the bank, what does not, and which owners are named in it wrongly.

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