Residents and representatives of many apartment communities understood the technicalities and exchanged ideas at the workshop. Pic: Krishanu Mukherjee
A workshop on ‘Managing Public Money’ was conducted for Treasurers of Apartment and Villa Complexes in Bangalore on October 5, Saturday. The Workshop conducted by ApartmentADDA – the Online Software for Society Accounting, attracted participation from over 40 Apartment & Villa Complexes, who utilised this platform to share challenges and best practices used by treasurers who manage funds to the tune of multiple crores in modern apartment complexes.
The workshop keynote was an inspiring speech from R K Misra, a successful entrepreneur-turned-active-civic-leader and politician. Misra recognised the participants as leaders in their communities and encouraged them to be active leaders beyond their gates as well, by not only voting but also contesting ward elections.
He shared information on the BCLIP (BPAC Civic Leadership Incubator Program). The workshop topics covered Maintenance Budget Structuring, Financial Governance, Vendor Management, Transparency to Residents etc.
It also covered ambiguities in Service Tax for residential communities. Clarities were arrived at related to TDS, Income Tax etc. Interesting case studies were presented by management committee members.
Arathi Manay of Brigade Millennium, an apartment community in JP Nagar, outlined how they said NO to ‘facilitation money’ paid to Electrical Inspectors, instead took his fault report seriously and ensured those faults were fixed even though it meant substantial supervision effort on the part of the MC members. This led to establishment of sound electrical maintenance and supervision discipline that is beneficial in the long term for the Building.
Anil Danti and Anil Agarwal of Brigade Metropolis, a 1600-unit Complex in Whitefield, shared the best practices utilising which the community has been able to hold the maintenance contribution at Rs 2/sqft/month, relatively low for comparable facilities, without impacting the reserve funds or corpus fund.
The workshop was highly interactive with very interesting question and answers keeping it lively throughout the 4 hours. A question from a participant asking if any builder has ever returned the corpus fund back to the owners association along with interest received a resounding Yes from two MC members – one from a Brigade property and one from a Sobha property.
Related presentations:
Apartment Adda presentation
http://www.slideshare.net/apartmentadda/guide-for-treasurers
Arathi Manay presentation
Brigade Metropolis presentaiton
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