You're a volunteer board member for a condo association. Nobody on the board studied accounting. Yet every month, you need to know who paid their fees, how much is left in the reserve fund, whether the budget is on track, and whether the snow removal company got paid.
Most self-managed condos handle this with an Excel file that nobody else understands. When the treasurer leaves the board, the next person inherits a mysterious spreadsheet with broken formulas.
CondoAide replaces that spreadsheet with something everyone can use — no training, no accounting jargon.
No debits, no credits — just money in and money out
The philosophy is simple. A condo board member thinks like this:
- Unit 204 paid their March fees.
- We paid the snow removal company.
- We transferred $2,000 to the reserve fund.
- Are we on budget? Who hasn't paid?
That's exactly what CondoAide shows you. No general ledger, no trial balance, no journal entries. You record money coming in or money going out. The system handles the rest.
Behind the scenes, CondoAide translates your actions into proper fund accounting — operations, reserve, self-insurance — so your accountant gets clean data at year-end. But you never see the complexity.
What you can do on the free plan
Basic financial tools are available to all condo associations, including the free plan. We believe every building deserves clear visibility into its finances, regardless of software budget.
Record income and expenses. Common fees received, vendors paid, inter-fund transfers — a 4-field form, not 12. Choose the fund (operations, reserve, self-insurance), the amount, the date, and the category. Done.
See each fund's balance in real time. The dashboard shows three numbers: operations balance, reserve fund balance, self-insurance balance. Click a balance to see the transactions behind it. Every dollar is traceable.
Track payments by unit. Who paid, who's late, how much each owner owes. The unit page shows the full history and current balance. No more digging through Excel to check if unit 302 paid February.
Categorize expenses. Snow removal, insurance, maintenance, administration — your expenses are sorted by category. The budget approved at the annual meeting is your reference: CondoAide compares actual spending to projections for each line item.
Manage vendors. Create a vendor directory with contact details. When you record a payment, select the vendor — the history builds automatically. You know exactly how much you've paid each vendor this year.
Generate financial statements in PDF. At year-end, generate an income statement and balance sheet adapted for condo associations. The document is ready for your annual meeting and for your accountant, if you have one.
And if you want to go further
For associations that want more automation, the Advanced Finances add-on ($29/month) unlocks:
- CSV bank statement import
- Assisted bank reconciliation (automatic matching between your transactions and bank statements)
- Budget vs. actual comparison with overspending alerts
- Year-end assistant with guided checklist
But these tools are a bonus, not a requirement. Everything a small condo needs to keep proper books is already in the free plan.
Built for volunteers, not accountants
Every design decision in CondoAide answers the same question: will a volunteer board member who has never opened QuickBooks understand what they're looking at?
The vocabulary is everyday language. We say "Income" instead of "Credit." "Expense" instead of "Debit." "Balance" instead of "Net Assets." Each screen answers one question at a time: the dashboard answers "Are we OK?", the transaction list answers "Where did the money go?", the unit page answers "Is this owner up to date?"
If you can read a bank statement, you can use CondoAide.
Why not just use Excel?
Excel works — until it doesn't. Here's what we see regularly in self-managed condos:
The treasurer's Excel file is on their personal computer. Other board members can't access it. When an owner asks for a statement, you have to call the treasurer. When the treasurer leaves the board, the file sometimes disappears with them.
Formulas break. One bad copy-paste and the reserve fund balance is off by $4,000 without anyone noticing for six months.
There's no audit trail. Who recorded that transaction? When was it modified? Impossible to tell in an Excel file shared by email.
CondoAide solves all three problems: the data is online (accessible to the entire board), calculations are automatic (no formulas to maintain), and every change is tracked (who, when, what).
The right tool for small condos
Large 200-unit towers have a manager and an accountant. They don't need CondoAide for finances. But associations with 5 to 50 units — the ones that manage everything themselves with volunteers — often have no suitable tool. Too small for QuickBooks, too serious for an improvised spreadsheet.
That's exactly who we built this for. Simple, free for essential features, and rigorous enough that the year-end accountant doesn't have to reconstruct your data.
— The CondoAide Team
Still managing your condo's finances in Excel? Try CondoAide for free →