For board members
Back to index This article is for you if you sit on the board and vote on expense decisions. What changed for you Two things, and both of them exist to make your vote more informed. When you vote on...
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This article is for you if you sit on the board and vote on expense decisions.
What changed for you
Two things, and both of them exist to make your vote more informed.
- When you vote on a recurring expense, you can now see what you are actually committing to. Not just this month's number. The total.
- Some expenses will now show up as "covered", meaning the board already approved them. You should understand what that means before you see one.
1. The commitment summary on the decision screen
When the decision in front of you is backed by a recurring contract, you will see a block of facts. On the web it sits between the description and the vote buttons, so you cannot get to Approve without scrolling past it. That placement is on purpose.
What each fact means
| Fact | What it is telling you |
|---|---|
| FIXED or VARIABLE | FIXED means the price is a committed number. The property signed up for it. VARIABLE means the amount moves (a utility bill, for instance) and the figure shown is what it currently is, not a promise. |
| The amount and cadence | For example, "$2,350.00 monthly". A VARIABLE amount carries a ~ because it is not a fixed number. |
| Term | How long this runs. "Thru Jun 30, 2027" is a fixed term. "Open-ended · renews Jul 2027" means it has no end date, and its approval comes back to you in twelve months. |
| Next run | When the next expense actually posts. |
| Committed total | This is the number you are voting on. |
Committed total: read this one twice
The monthly amount is not what you are approving.
A $2,350 monthly contract running 36 months does not commit the property to $2,350. It commits it to $84,600. That is the number in the Committed total field, and it is the number the property will actually spend if you vote yes.
If the committed total is larger than you expected given the monthly figure, that is the summary doing its job. Ask about it.
If the contract is open-ended or VARIABLE, the committed total reads "Ongoing". The system will not invent a precise total where no honest one exists. For an open-ended contract, remember that its approval comes back to you every twelve months, so "ongoing" is bounded by your ability to say no next year.
2. The amendment: the old price and the new one
Sometimes the reason a recurring expense is back in front of you is that somebody changed the price.
When that is the case, you will see the old amount and the new amount side by side, with the percentage change:
Amendment
$2,350.00→ $2,630.00 +11.9%Full staff chain and board re-run on the amended amount
An increase is shown in a warning colour. A decrease is shown in a positive colour. That is true on the web and on your phone: a price coming down should not look like an alarm, and it does not.
If you see a delta, the ask is the new number. Look at the percentage. A 2.8% inflation adjustment and a 40% jump are entirely different conversations, and you are entitled to have the second one.
This is the single biggest change for you. Under the old system, a vendor raising a committed price by 40% could reach the books with nobody voting on it. Now it comes back to you, and it comes back with the old number attached so you can see the size of the move.
3. On your phone
The board decision card in the mobile app shows the same facts:
- The amount, with the old and new side by side if it is an amendment, and the percentage.
- Term
- Committed total
It is display-only. You are seeing what you would see on the web, in a form that fits a phone.
If a decision is not backed by a recurring contract, no commitment block appears. That absence is meaningful: it means this is a one-off, not a multi-year commitment.
4. What "covered" means
You may hear staff say an expense is "covered by a board decision", or see a Board-covered indication on an expense.
Here is exactly what that means, and exactly what it does not.
What it means
The board already approved this thing. For example, at the March meeting you voted to approve "Replace the lobby carpet, up to $40,000". When the carpet invoice arrives, staff can point the expense at that decision.
The effect: the expense does not come back to the board for a second vote. You already voted.
What it does not mean
It does not mean the expense skipped approval. The staff approval chain runs in full, every step, exactly as it would otherwise. Nothing about your controls is relaxed.
It does not mean staff can self-authorize. They can only point at a decision that is:
- closed (the vote is over),
- approved (you said yes),
- at this property, and
- a standalone decision (not itself a decision about another expense).
Anything else is rejected by the system. A pending decision cannot be used. A rejected decision cannot be used. A decision from another property cannot be used.
It is not invisible. Every skipped board escalation is recorded, and the record names the decision that authorized the skip. So the question "why did this $38,400 expense never come to us?" always has a specific answer: "because of your March 14 decision, and here it is."
What happens if you change your mind
If a decision is later re-opened, deferred, or rejected, any expense pointing at it immediately shows stale coverage to staff, and routes to the board normally on its next action. Your revocation takes effect right away. A revoked decision does not keep authorizing spending.
Expenses that already went through while the decision was approved stand as they are. Those skips were legitimate at the time and are not retroactively unwound.
5. Two things you should know about how contracts now work
Approvals expire. A contract you approve for a 12-month term stops being approved when that term ends. An open-ended contract comes back to you every twelve months. The property cannot keep spending on a stale approval, and staff cannot let it: generation stops on its own and staff are emailed. If it is worth continuing, someone will bring it back to you.
A price change comes back to you. On a FIXED contract, changing the committed amount re-runs the full approval, including your vote if the amount is at or above the board's floor. There is no back door. Even the save-as-template flow, which used to be one, has had that path removed entirely.
The question you should ask before every recurring vote
"What is the committed total, and how long are we locked in?"
Both answers are on the screen in front of you. That is new, and it is the whole point.