How Does Your Community Association Store HOA Records?

The proper storage and maintenance of community records may seem, at first, like one of the simplest, most fundamental tasks for the HOA. In reality, however, it is also one of the most essential, and sometimes one of the most cumbersome.

Certainly, members of the association board can come to dread those times when community members ask to see certain HOA documents. Accessing those files is sometimes hard, and besides, the resident’s motives for requesting those documents might cause some worry.

Homeowners are not the only ones who might request to see documents, either. Your vendors and contractors may also ask to look back on previous paperwork. What this means is that you may potentially have records stored in different places—homeowner documents in one area, vendor records in another.

Of course, all of this can cause a headache for community association board members, but there is good news: Much of that hassle can be minimized through some basic organization. Having all files properly stored and organized in a central location, where they are always readily accessible, can go a long way.

Easier said than done? Well, it’s certainly a big undertaking to organize all HOA records, but there are a few ways you can make it easier. You might begin with simply having a discussion about the following five questions;

Who are the people who generate and store your HOA records—and who are the folks who will need access to them?

What are the HOA records that need to be stored and accessed?

Where are these HOA records stored?

How are these HOA records stored?

When are these HOA records generated, and when do they need to be accessed?

Answering these questions goes a long way. The question of how the records are stored is particularly pertinent; where once it may have been necessary to have box after box of files, or else a huge computer mainframe, many associations today store their records with a jump drive, or perhaps a virtual server. A professional HOA management company can surely help you with these IT solutions.

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Bryan Kuester

Bryan Kuester

Bryan is the CEO of Kuester Management Group. He has over 15 years of managing community associations throughout North and South Carolina.

His specialties include Community Association Management - maintenance, budgeting for operational and reserve funding, long-range planning, covenant enforcement, amenity management, onsite management, large scale management.

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