In New Zealand? Visit quarter.nz for body corporates.
Every building is spending down an asset. The roof, the lifts, the membranes, the paint and the plant all have a service life and a replacement cost, and the only question is whether the body corporate is collecting for them or deferring them. A maintenance plan is how you tell. A plan that is stale, generic or never reviewed does not tell you anything — it just makes the building feel prepared while the gap grows.
Queensland bodies corporate must prepare a sinking fund forecast covering at least the next nine years, adjusted annually — which makes Queensland's requirement more like a rolling forecast than a fixed plan. The annual adjustment is the important part and the part most often skipped: a forecast that is not readjusted each year quietly becomes a document about a building that no longer exists.
Governed by the Body Corporate and Community Management Act 1997, administered by the Office of the Commissioner for Body Corporate and Community Management.
If it has not been adjusted this year, that is the finding.
In Quarter: Upload the plan you already have and Quarter reads it into a costed schedule of items, lifecycles and due years. From there it projects the fund thirty years out and tells you the annual contribution that actually funds it.
Coatings and sealants in north Queensland do not last as long as a national template assumes.
Regional Queensland build costs differ substantially from the south-east.
In Quarter: Quotes, studies, assessments and correspondence attach to the decision that authorised them, so the file an assessor, an owner or a buyer's solicitor asks for is already assembled.
The gap between the two is your deferred liability, expressed in dollars.
In Quarter: The plan's required contribution feeds the budget, and approving the budget raises the levies from it — so what owners pay is derived from the plan rather than from last year's number plus a bit.
With 21 days' notice, so owners can read it.
In Quarter: Book the year's meetings once — the AGM and the committee meetings around it — and Quarter carries the notice periods, the agendas and the invitations from there. The insurance renewal and the plan review sit on the same calendar, so the year is visible rather than remembered.
Which is what the annual adjustment is for.
The annual adjustment is the obligation. A static nine-year forecast is not one.
Queensland conditions are harder on the building envelope than most templates allow.
It exists to determine what is reasonable and necessary. Ignoring it defeats the purpose.
Most buildings have something. Far fewer have a plan that reflects the building as it actually is, costed at what work actually costs now, and matched to what the levies actually raise.
A plan is only as good as the maintenance record behind it and the budget in front of it. Quarter connects the three.
What the plan said would happen, and what actually happened. The gap between them is the most useful number a committee has.
Budget from the plan's contribution rate rather than from last year's figure plus a bit.
Where a review is required, it is tracked as an obligation with a date, not a good intention.
Repairs, quotes, invoices and warranties attached to the thing they were for, so the next plan review starts from evidence.
What the fund holds, what the plan says it needs, and the difference — visible, so a levy increase is a conversation rather than an ambush.
General information about Queensland, not legal or financial advice for your building. Legislation is amended and grant programmes open and close — check the current position with the Office of the Commissioner for Body Corporate and Community Management or the administering body before you act on anything here.
Tell us about your building in Queensland and we will show you exactly how Quarter would run it.
