This is the step most often missed at the start, and it was written down nowhere. One administrator put it exactly right: "I may be starting at step 2 before doing step 1."
Step 1 is the budget.
The order to follow
- Create the fiscal year, from the toolbar on Accounting (Operations → Finances).
- Create that year's budget, under Operations → Finances → Budget.
- Approve it. Approval, not creation, is what generates the amounts due.
- Then enter the transactions.
Steps 1, 2 and 4 can happen in any order without breaking anything. Step 3 is the one that changes what the software knows about your condo.
What approving the budget sets off
The moment the budget turns Approved, CondoAide generates each unit's amounts due, for all twelve months of the year, each with its own due date. Everything below follows from that:
- the contribution notice sent to each co-owner;
- each unit's account balance, and therefore its arrears;
- an automatic credit for a unit that paid more than it was charged;
- the receivable that year-end closing can recognise;
- the "contributions charged" column of the syndicate certificate.
None of these can be typed in somewhere else. They are derived from the budget, and from nothing else.
With no budget, CondoAide does not say zero — it says it does not know
This is a rule the product holds itself to. A screen showing "$0 in arrears" when no budget exists would be lying: it would present as a measurement something that was never measured.
So where it matters you will read "No approved budget for this fiscal year" instead. That is information, not an error. Year-end closing says it too, on its summary step: with no budget, the difference between the balance you enter and the calculated position will not become a receivable.
Why it is built this way
A condo actually keeps two sets of books, answering two different questions.
What the syndicate holds is money actually received. That is what the contingency fund and the self-insurance fund have to be: article 1071 CCQ requires the contingency fund to be liquid in part and available in the short term.
What each co-owner owes is a receivable, and it exists independently of when the money arrives. Article 1072 para. 3 CCQ puts it plainly: the syndicate notifies each co-owner without delay of the amount of their contributions and the date on which they are due. The contribution is owed on its due date, whether or not payment arrives.
The distinction is not academic. Article 2729 CCQ charges the fraction of a co-owner in default for more than 30 days in paying their share of the common expenses. It is not acquired by itself on the 31st day — the same article provides that it is acquired only from the registration of a notice in the land register — but what it rests on is the charge owed, not the charge collected. A receivable that vanished for want of payment would destroy the basis of that hypothec.
The budget is what brings the second system into existence. That is why it comes first.
Who sets the budget
Article 1072 para. 1 CCQ is precise: annually, the board of directors fixes the co-owners' contribution to the common expenses, after consulting the general meeting.
So the board sets it. The meeting is consulted; it does not adopt it. In CondoAide that maps onto the two actions on the Budget page: "Submit to the board for adoption", then "Approve".
If you already entered a year with no budget
Nothing is lost and nothing needs re-entering. Your transactions describe money that really came in and went out; they remain accurate.
Create the budget for that year and approve it. The amounts due are generated for the twelve months of the budget's own year, whatever today's date is: approving a 2024 budget today fills 2024. Co-owner accounts, arrears and credits then appear on their own.