If you’re looking for the punchline to this question, the answer is YES. And it’s not because you need to protect against questionable behaviour, I recommend that every treasurer should be approving the invoices for the building because they know their building better than almost anyone else.
While I agree the strata manager should be involved in the approval process, they should not be the only person approving invoices. Strata managers typically approve 50 to 200 invoices a week across multiple buildings. It is impossible for them to remember every invoice that has come across the desk.
And at the end of the day, it’s your money that’s been spent, there should be someone involved in that process as a direct connection to how much money gets spent.
Approving your invoices should be extremely easy, most Strata management companies have online invoice approval portals which make this extremely easy. if your company strata management firm does not have an online invoice approval portal you can also track and approve your invoices with a simple spreadsheet and shared Google Drive for your invoice to be stored and viewed.
Below is a simple process on how to set up your invoice approval process using Google Drive
- Sign up to google drive (free)
- create folder “invoice FY2018”
- create a sheet with column (invoice number, contractor, amount, approved or declined, actioned
- share link to spreadsheet & folder
Just remember to insert rows and add to the top, and copy your invoices into that folder.
