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 strata corporation 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.
South Australia requires a sinking fund, but — unlike most jurisdictions — it does not require a ten-year plan behind it. That leaves the adequacy of the fund entirely to the corporation's own judgement, and it is why South Australian buildings are disproportionately likely to meet a large repair with a special levy. Building a plan you are not required to build is the single highest-value thing an SA corporation can do.
Governed by the Strata Titles Act 1988 and Community Titles Act 1996, administered by Consumer and Business Services.
And when anybody last asked whether it was enough.
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.
From an inspection. This is the decision that separates SA corporations that get surprised from those that do not.
Every three to five years, recorded, so it survives a change of committee.
In Quarter: Build the motion from the quotes and the budget, send the notice to every owner off the ownership register on the statutory clock, and record the vote as it is cast — a decision carries its majority automatically and emails the outcome to whoever raised it.
And decide, deliberately, whether to close the gap or accept it.
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.
What the fund holds, what the forecast says it needs.
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.
Gradually is far easier to pass than a special levy is.
Not being required to plan is not the same as not needing to.
Without a forecast, 'we have money in the sinking fund' means nothing.
It is the most expensive and least equitable way to fund predictable work.
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 South Australia, not legal or financial advice for your building. Legislation is amended and grant programmes open and close — check the current position with Consumer and Business Services or the administering body before you act on anything here.
Tell us about your building in South Australia and we will show you exactly how Quarter would run it.
