OMC Budget Management

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tnegun

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I'm a director within our OMC and have taken on monitoring our budget vs spend. Something which has always frustrated me, is not being able to distinguish between arrears and payment of this years service fee. The agent doesn't believe this level of detail is warranted and that our current estate management package doesn't easily allow for this. Overall, we're in a good financial position, so should I just be happy with annual opening and closing balances, or is more granular visibility warranted?
 
Your agent is having you on.

Ultimate responsibility of the finances is with the directors, not the agent.


Figure 3: Key financial information to be regularly reviewed by the board
Click to expand...
• Bank balances – current account and sinking fund
• Service charge income:
- Invoiced year to date (YTD) vs. collected YTD
- Budgeted annual service charge income vs. current forecast (i.e. budget adjusted for anything
unexpected)
• Service charge aged debtors (in descending balance) and by property/owner
• Property management expenses – actual YTD vs. budgeted YTD
• Sinking fund contribution – invoiced YTD vs. collected YTD
• Sinking fund balance vs. expected upcoming sinking fund expenditure
• Sinking fund balance target in 1 year, 3 years, 5 years+2
Click to expand...
 
How does the agent or management company know who to chase for arrears/unpaid charges if this information isn't readily available?

I remember, years ago, when our annual report used to explicitly list the properties in arrears and the amount due, but I don't think they do it these days and it's probably not allowed under GDPR or something?
 
We get a report that shows the amount outstanding per unit, the last payment date and the amount. It's over 500 units and in a poorly formatted pdf. We do pursue those with debts above a certain amount and send reminders but the visibility leaves a lot to be desired. You can infer from the balances how old the debt is, but with over 500 lines, it's painful to analyse. I have attempted to extract to excel but its a lot of work for something to me that should be a fairly basic feature of the management software. The agent is happy that there's money in the account but that seems a pretty poor metric to run the OMC on to me.
 
there's probably some AI tool that will convert the PDF to Excel. Though as you say it should be possible to spit out a spreadsheet directly from the software.
 
Have you tried
It is possible to import data from a PDF file into Excel using the built-in feature in Excel.

You can do this by going to the Data tab in Excel, clicking on Get Data, then From File, then From PDF. This will allow you to select the PDF file you want to import data from.
Click to expand...
 
If the management agent isn't helping to manage the development efficiently then perhaps the management company needs to look at engaging a different agent that is more helpful and efficient? They (the agent) is working for you (the management company) so if they're not doing the job properly find somebody who can?
 
There are a number of people in here who could knock together a spreadsheet database or other tools showing invoices issued, payments received, balance due by unit and of course over all, ageing the outstanding debts in the process (30, 60, 90, 90+) 3 or 4 hours work at the outside. But that's not the issue, as I see it. Where's the data to populate sheets / database?

You don't need AI to suck the data out of the PDF/PDFs - there are tools out there that can do that, they may not be entirely foolproof; but they could save a lot of typing.

PDF to .xlsx

Another PDF to .xlsx

I agree with ClubMan.
 
Thanks all unfortunately, I've already tried several of those tools/methods, and for whatever reason, everything ends up in a single column or a single row across several rows. The best results were from cobbling together a python script to do the conversion. In any case I've gone back and requested it in Excel format as it was proving a massive waste of my time and even with the python results, I couldn't be 100% sure it was correct. The pdfs are all exports from MyBlockman, and I refuse to believe they can't provide it in Excel. I think it's largely a skills issue on their side.

There are also issues with this being a mixed development, every unit is treated as the same again, I'm told this is a limitation of MyBlockman not being able to differentiate between a house and an apartment. The parting gift from the developer was to sign us into a 36-month contract with significant penalties for early termination, so we have to work with them for another 18 months.
 
From the website:

"What is MyBlockman?

MyBlockman is a web portal for lessees, property owners and management company directors to securely view their service charge and ground rent accounts online.

Once online, users can:

View service charge and ground rent history.
Download Account Demands & Reminders.
Download important documents such as Audited Accounts, Budgets, Leases and House Rules etc.
View announcements.
And much more..."

Tell the managing agent that you, the board of the OMC, want your own direct access to the software you are paying for.
 
I've asked multiple times to have it in excel or csv format but they seem incapable of producing it. I've offered this evening to screenshare with them to see if I can figure it out for myself, so we'll see if they'll allow that. I was granted access to MyBlockman just last week after several months of asking, now I have the director's view, but there's nothing useful there it's just an extra tab with a file share for reports the agent produces so more useless PDFs. We don't pay directly for MyBlockman either so they wouldn't talk to me other than to refer me back to the agent.
 
My offer wasn't well received I got a call from the agent/owner this afternoon to say that what I want isn't possible, and a screen share isn't legal, as they have access to other OMC's. Such nonsense anyway, I wasn't going to argue with him as it was obvious he wasn't going to concede and kept spouting on about managing 150 other OMCs and that none require this level of detail and that it will be available when the accounts are audited next March!!. I'm going to speak to the other directors and decide how we want to proceed.
 
We already have done, but the contract terms basically means we pay out the full term if we cancel it so we're stuck for now.
 
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