Recurring contracts and board-decision tagging
Who this is for: property managers, accounting staff, and board members. Recurring expenses used to be a quiet corner of the system. You set up a template, you set up a schedule, and expenses started...
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Who this is for: property managers, accounting staff, and board members.
Recurring expenses used to be a quiet corner of the system. You set up a template, you set up a schedule, and expenses started appearing. Nobody could easily answer three questions that actually matter:
- Is this amount locked, or does it move every month?
- How long did we approve this for, and is that approval still good?
- What is the total we have committed to, not just this month's bill?
This release answers all three, and it stops money from drifting quietly. A recurring expense is now a contract: it has a type, a term, an approval that expires, and a visible total commitment. Nothing renews itself. Nothing silently overwrites anything. Nothing keeps posting after its approval lapses.
It also adds a second, smaller thing: if the board already approved something, you can tag the expense to that decision instead of asking the board to vote on the same thing twice.
The short version
| What changed | What it means for you |
|---|---|
| Contracts have a type: FIXED or VARIABLE | FIXED means the price is committed. VARIABLE means the amount moves month to month. |
| Approval is term-scoped and expires | A contract approved for 12 months stops being approved after 12 months. Open-ended contracts re-approve every 12 months. |
| Expiry pauses generation | Nothing keeps posting on a lapsed approval. You get an email. |
| Renewal is manual | You extend the term or re-submit for approval. Nothing auto-approves. |
| Changing the price re-arms approval | An amendment goes back through the full approval chain, and the board if it is at or above the board floor. |
| Save as Template is governed | A duplicate name is blocked. There is no overwrite path anymore. |
| One contract per template | You cannot stack two live schedules on the same template. |
| Approvers see the commitment | The contract type, the cadence, the term, occurrences remaining, and the total committed amount, on every approval screen. |
| VARIABLE contracts can bypass the board | An explicit, audited escape hatch for bills like utilities. FIXED contracts can never do this. |
| Tag an expense to an approved board decision | Skips only the board escalation step. The staff approval chain always still runs in full. |
Articles
| # | Article | Read it if |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Understanding recurring contracts | You want the mental model: FIXED vs VARIABLE, and why the distinction exists. |
| 2 | Creating a recurring contract | You are setting one up. Every field, explained. |
| 3 | Contract approval and how it expires | You want to know what "approved" actually covers, and when it stops. |
| 4 | Renewing an expired contract | A contract of yours says "Approval expired". |
| 5 | Amending a contract's amount | The vendor raised the price. |
| 6 | Saving an expense as a template | You want to reuse an expense you already entered. |
| 7 | What approvers see: the commitment summary | You approve expenses. Read this one. |
| 8 | Bypassing board voting on a VARIABLE contract | You have a utility bill that keeps hitting the board floor. |
| 9 | Tagging an expense to a board decision | The board already approved this. You do not want to ask twice. |
| 10 | Reading the Scheduled tab | You want to know what every badge and every state means. |
| 11 | For board members | You are on the board and you vote on these. |
| 12 | FAQ and troubleshooting | Something is not doing what you expected. |
Where to find things
- Scheduled contracts: Accounting, then Expenses, then the Scheduled tab.
- Templates: Property Settings, then Accounting, then Expense Templates. There is also a Manage templates link in the header of the Scheduled tab.
- Save as Template: open any expense, then the overflow (three dots) action menu, then Save as Template.
- Tag a board decision: open the expense, choose Edit Details, then the Require board decision section.
A note on the audit trail
This whole release is built on one idea: money should never move without a trace. Every governance action described in these articles is recorded. That includes who turned on a board-voting bypass and when, every time a bypass was actually used to skip a vote, every time an approval was re-armed and why, every expiry, every board-decision tag and untag, and every time a board escalation was skipped because a decision already covered it.
You do not have to take our word for that. Each article has a "What the system records" note telling you exactly what lands in the audit trail.