How PowerStrata can Help Solve Day-to-Day Challenges Faced by BC Strata Corporations and Strata Management Companies

0:00 – PowerStrata Platform Overview and Modules

0:00 Nancy Wu: So my name is Nancy Wu from PowerStrata, and I'm glad to be here today to talk about PowerStrata and how it helps solve day-to-day challenges for BC strata corporations and strata management companies. So, PowerStrata Systems Inc was established in 2011. We're entirely in BC and we're focused on supporting BC strata corporations and strata management companies across the province. We're a fast growing company, currently with over 70,000 users.

0:31 We believe PowerStrata is the most comprehensive BC strata management platform and web portal there is. Our system helps strata corporations and strata management companies to be efficient and effective when it comes to administering and managing the day-to-day operations. This year we're launching our new BC strata accounting module, making PowerStrata truly an end-to-end solution. PowerStrata is compliant with the BC Strata Property Act and regulations, PIPA and the Real Estate Services Act.

1:13 For instance, when you add a tenant to the system it will remind you that a Form K is needed. When we say our system is comprehensive we really mean it. For example, our system keeps records about everything in the strata, including the units, owners, tenants, parking stalls and storage lockers. It has a document repository for all strata documents, and documents that are specific to a unit can be uploaded to the unit documents page.

1:53 It lets you conduct, manage and keep track of all strata internal and external communications right in the system, by email and by mail when required. It lets you conduct discussions and hold polls, which are especially useful for council communications between meetings. It has a calendar module that helps you manage all strata meetings and events. It has a maintenance module that helps you manage assets. It allows you to keep track of service providers and vendors.

2:38 It also lets you generate Form Bs with supporting documents, as well as Forms F, G and H. The newest addition to PowerStrata is our BC strata accounting module. You can switch between the management and accounting modules using the new button at the top of the menu bar. Our new module has complete accounting capabilities designed specifically around BC strata accounting requirements. Our system supports all kinds of strata corporations.

3:18 It is used by self-managed stratas and management companies of different sizes. It's cloud-based so you don't have to install or manage anything. We update the system when there are new legislative requirements, and we provide our clients with new features and enhancements regularly. Obviously privacy is a big consideration for strata corporations and strata management companies. The BC Real Estate Services Act says that all electronic records kept by strata managers must be kept on servers in BC.

3:56 – Data Residency, Mobile Access and Pricing

4:05 Nancy Wu: So if you store your strata records on Google Drive, OneDrive or somewhere else, the data may end up outside Canada, and there's no guarantee that it will be kept as per the provisions of the Act. The PowerStrata servers are in BC, and you can rest assured that all data and documents stored in our system never go outside of BC. PowerStrata works on your desktop and your mobile device and is completely mobile friendly.

4:40 PowerStrata is cost effective, our rates are extremely competitive. You pay only based on the number of units in your strata, or the number of units you manage. You get unlimited users and unlimited data and document storage. There are never any hidden fees and no long-term contracts, and all the updates and enhancements are free unless you require very specific and unique customization. Now, what are some key challenges faced by strata corporations and strata management companies, and how does PowerStrata help to solve them?

5:24 – User Roles and Access Levels

5:24 Nancy Wu: Well, first of all, there are many members of a strata community. For example there are owners and tenants, strata council members and section executive members, and strata managers and their staff. PowerStrata is for all these people and they all use our system. They all have unique needs and challenges, so PowerStrata offers a different experience for each of these groups. Tenants can register in the system, but depending on how it's configured, they have the least amount of access to data and documents and can do the fewest things in the system.

6:05 Owners can see more data and documents and can do more things. Naturally, council members and section executive members have much greater access in the system and can do much more. And finally, strata managers and their staff can see and do just about everything with respect to the stratas they manage. So let's take a look at the challenges faced by owners and tenants first, and see how PowerStrata helps them.

6:38 Owners and tenants often need access to strata information but don't know where to find it. They sometimes have questions or problems but don't know who to contact or how to contact the right people.

6:46 – Self-Serve Features for Owners and Tenants

6:50 Nancy Wu: They want to be able to help themselves, like obtaining strata documents, updating their contact information and submitting requests. So let's look at some of the self-serve features that are available to owners and tenants. They are accessible from anywhere and at any time. Owners and tenants can check property information about the strata, like key dates, key bylaw restrictions, the names of council members and the property management contacts.

7:28 They can also view their own unit information, including locker and parking assignments, strata fees and legal information. They can view and update their own contact information and their own emergency contact information. They can access the document library where they can view and download all the documents they are entitled to see. Owners can also view financial reports in the system, and with our new accounting module, owners and tenants will be able to see their own ledger.

8:11 PowerStrata has a built-in calendar where owners and tenants can check on strata events. They can also subscribe to see the calendar in other calendar applications like Google Calendar and Outlook, so they don't have to log into the system to see what's going on in the strata. Owners and tenants can view their inbox in the system and respond to all communications and correspondence sent by strata council, section executive and the management company.

8:46 Communications that are sent to users are also sent by email, if the user has a valid email address in the system and they haven't opted out. This means that users don't have to log into the system to see communications that are sent to them via PowerStrata. Owners and tenants can contact the strata council, section executive and property manager. They don't need to know who these people are or their email addresses, they just need to click on the contact button on the dashboard.

9:23 Owners and tenants can send any type of request, like a maintenance request or bylaw complaint, right from the main dashboard of the portal. Again, they don't need to know who to contact, all they have to do is click on the appropriate request form on the dashboard. Now let's take a look at some of the challenges that strata council members and section executive members face. They too need easy access to strata information and documents.

9:55 – Challenges Facing Council and Section Executives

9:55 Nancy Wu: They often struggle to find information as it's kept in different places, and sometimes it can't even be found. Often things like quotes and documents for council meetings are sent around by email, so they can't easily be located down the road. In other cases the management company might have information and documents that council members need, and they have to rely on the strata manager to give them the information.

10:30 Communicating with other council members between meetings can be challenging as well, with multiple emails back and forth about one issue. Again, PowerStrata helps with all these challenges. First of all, council members and section executive members have the ability to self-serve just like owners and tenants, however they have access to much more information. For example, they can see information about all the units in the strata. They can also see information about the owners and tenants, as well as the parking and locker assignments.

11:09 They can also see documents which are only accessible to them. For example, there could be a contracts category on the documents page containing all the strata's contracts. There might be a quotes category containing all the quotes that a council has considered or needs to consider. There might be separate categories for council meetings, where documents related to each meeting are stored. Access to documents on the documents page is role based.

11:48 In general, every document can be made available just to management employees, to management as well as council and section executive members, to all of those as well as owners, or to all users including tenants. All the categories and access permissions on the documents page are completely configurable. Communications is a challenge for all members of a strata community, but PowerStrata has tools that are specifically designed to make communications much easier.

12:19 – Discussion Rooms, Polls and Correspondence Retention

12:27 Nancy Wu: Here, for example, you can create discussion rooms in the system so council members can exchange views about a topic. The entire conversation is saved in one place so there's no need to search through emails to see all the responses. You can also create polls so that council members can vote on a certain topic between council meetings. For example, they might need to approve a quote or approve the minutes of a previous meeting.

13:03 Voting can be done right in the system, or by ballots that are sent to participants by email. Council members often need to be able to go back and review correspondence that was sent previously. In fact the Strata Property Act says that strata correspondence must be kept for two years. In PowerStrata each strata has a shared strata message box that is intended for strata correspondence. Owners and tenants can message the strata message box, and it can be configured to allow specific council members or all council members to view and or reply to the messages.

13:43 – How PowerStrata Helps Strata Managers

13:50 Nancy Wu: Finally, let's look at how PowerStrata helps strata managers. We all know that being a strata manager is not easy, and there are nowhere near the number of strata managers that we need in BC.

14:03 It's very challenging to stay above water and do all the things you need to do when you manage even just one strata, like keeping up with the email and correspondence that's received and that needs to be sent, figuring out which owners need paper notices and who can receive email notices, writing Form Bs and providing the required supporting documents, managing and remembering all the maintenance that needs to be done, and of course doing the books.

14:32 These are just a few examples of the things that PowerStrata helps with. By the way, self-managed strata councils and section executives also have many of these challenges, so PowerStrata helps them with these things too. It's also worth noting that many of the solutions we've already talked about for owners, strata councils and section executive members will help strata managers as well, and save them a lot of time.

15:07 – Messaging, Hard Copy Delivery and Templates

15:09 Nancy Wu: Messaging and communications is a big part of PowerStrata. The messaging module takes care of both electronic communications and hard copy communications when it's required, like when you need to send notices for a general meeting. PowerStrata lets management, as well as council members or section executive members if they're enabled, send messages and attachments to one user or any combination of users. When composing a message you just select people or groups, like all owners or all tenants.

15:47 And as you can see on this slide, the owners' email addresses are not visible, so all recipients' email addresses are kept private. As mentioned earlier, messages are sent by email if the user has a valid email address in the system and hasn't opted out. The recipient can reply to the email without logging into the system, and the response is saved in the sent messages folder in the system.

16:23 PowerStrata keeps track of who can receive notice by email or hard copy delivery when sending any messages. You do that when you compose a message. When you send a message and select hard copy delivery, the system produces a hard copy delivery request which is sent to whoever is responsible for sending the hard copy notices. The hard copy delivery request identifies who has to receive the hard copy, and lets you print the message, attachments and mailing labels right from the system.

17:16 You can create templates for all correspondence that you send regularly, like bylaw letters, fine notifications, demand letters and alteration agreements or approvals. Correspondence can be sent through the system by email or via hard copy delivery request. You never have to look up an email address or a mailing address, or send emails separately.

17:39 – Request Forms, Tickets and Strata Forms

17:45 Nancy Wu: PowerStrata lets you configure request forms that owners and tenants can then complete and submit. You decide what information has to be provided, which fields are mandatory, and who will receive the request once submitted. You can create any type of request form, like alteration requests, maintenance requests, bylaw complaints, and move in or move out requests. By creating these forms and placing them on the dashboard you can improve the quality of information provided by owners and tenants and enable one and done.

18:24 Each request can be sent directly to the group or person who handles the matter, cutting down on misdirected emails and saving time. PowerStrata has a ticket feature that allows you to create tickets to keep track of projects and issues. By creating a ticket you can keep everything about a specific project or issue all together in one place, including the related documents, emails, events, meetings and tasks. You can also configure the system to automatically generate tickets as a result of requests submitted by owners and tenants.

19:10 PowerStrata lets you easily produce strata Forms B, F, G and H. The required information is automatically populated into the forms, including all the financial information when subscribing to the accounting module. You can also make revisions and changes if required. In addition, PowerStrata can automatically gather all the documents that are typically requested along with Form Bs, and you can send them directly from the supporting documents page. PowerStrata lets you easily schedule strata events like moves, maintenance, amenity bookings and meetings, and add them to the calendar.

19:59 By doing this, you and other strata stakeholders can see everything that's going on in the strata right in the calendar. For each event you can configure who sees it, who receives notices and reminders about the event, and when the notices and reminders are sent. If you're using any type of accounting system for your strata or stratas, it likely doesn't do exactly what you need it to do, because BC has very specific and often unique strata accounting requirements.

20:25 – Accounting: Budgets, Strata Fees and Levies

20:36 Nancy Wu: For example, there's often a different way of calculating strata fees in BC, sections need separate accounting, and different unit types may require separate strata fee formulas. PowerStrata handles all these and more, and does everything automatically right in the system. For example, it's easy to build an annual budget for a strata or a section, and of course you can download it and print it out to include in the AGM notice.

21:13 You can calculate the strata fees even if it requires a retroactive one-time catchup fee, or it's to be divided for the remaining months of the fiscal year. Of course you can download or print out the new strata fee schedule for inclusion in the AGM notice. Strata fees can be calculated by unit entitlement or by an alternate formula specified in the bylaws of the strata. For example, the system can calculate and then apply a different contribution formula for strata fees when stratas have different unit types.

21:55 In this example the strata charges the gas bill only to the units with gas fireplaces. You can easily charge the monthly strata fees just by clicking a button. You can calculate and charge special levies, either with single or installment payments, and you can process common transactions easily and quickly, like setting up a recurring charge to automatically be applied every month. These are just a few examples of all the features in the accounting module that will save you time, effort and frustration.

22:42 And of course the accounting module is completely integrated with the rest of the system, so there's no need to keep two sets of data. PowerStrata lets you create an asset inventory, which is similar to the list of assets contained in a depreciation report.

22:56 – Asset Inventory and 30-Year Capital Plans

23:02 Nancy Wu: With assets in the system you can then add maintenance tasks and capital projects and associate them with the assets. These are then displayed in the calendar. You can also generate annual work schedules and 30-year capital plans that contain the maintenance tasks and projects. Unlike those in a static depreciation report, the PowerStrata 30-year plans are dynamic, so you can run various scenarios. Of course PowerStrata can remind you throughout the year when maintenance tasks become due, so you can make arrangements with the vendors, schedule them in the calendar and notify owners and tenants as needed.

23:51 You can maintain all your service providers in the system and communicate with them by email from the system. In the case of a management company this includes a master list of all service providers used by all stratas. Finally, you can easily configure, run and download a variety of reports, such as owner reports, reports about the units, rentals, parking stall assignments and service providers. Most users find PowerStrata easy to use and intuitive.

24:30 There's a lot of help and reference materials, and our support team is very responsive. When you subscribe to PowerStrata we will help you get started and determine your training requirements. From there, free support is always available. So thank you for attending this presentation, and I hope you found it interesting and informative. Now I will be happy to answer any questions you may have, and after the session please don't hesitate to contact us for more information.

25:06 You can visit our website by scanning this QR code here you see on the screen, or contact us by sending us an email to info@powerstrata.com. And if you're interested in seeing a video demo of our system, you can submit your request from our website as well.

25:22 – Q&A: Data Export, Migration and Mobile Access

25:25 Nancy Wu: So thank you very much.

25:30 Ryan Grant: That was great, thanks a lot Nancy. Let me find the questions here. Somebody's asking, assuming documents and information is in the system, what is the cost and/or process should use of the system be discontinued by the strata and the documents are needed?

25:51 Nancy Wu: So yeah, let's say a strata has a direct contract with us and then they decide that they want to cancel their subscription. They just need to let us know, we'll provide an archive link, we'll email it to them, and then they can download all their documents via the link.

26:12 Ryan Grant: Awesome. Yeah, let me see if we have any more here.

26:17 Nancy Wu: Oh, and there's no charge for providing the archive link.

26:24 Ryan Grant: Oh perfect. Yeah. How easy is it to migrate from some other system to PowerStrata?

26:32 Nancy Wu: Okay, so when you set up a new property or a new account in our system, we'll provide you with templates, so basically it's just to gather all the information that we need to set up the system. And these are all Excel sheets, they're fairly easy to fill out, and if you need any help just let us know, we'll help you out.

26:59 So we'll help you set up units, and then if you would like to use our data import service, which will help you import owners and tenants information, service providers, your parking stalls and storage lockers information, so these are the things we can help you import so you don't have to manually enter everything. And this data import service is optional. But if you want to upload documents or meeting minutes, the owners or the council will have to do it themselves, because then they can decide how they want to categorize all the documents.

27:47 Ryan Grant: Yeah, perfect. Another one is about whether you guys have an app, like a standalone app on devices for owners or tenants to get into, or is it just the website that they have to manage?

28:04 Nancy Wu: Right, so as mentioned in the presentation, our portal is mobile friendly, so we don't have an app, but most users find it's equivalent to having an app. Basically you just have to create a shortcut on your device, and then you click on it, put in your login information, and then you're there, and all the functionality that you see by using a desktop are all there on your mobile device.

28:39 And we do have a guide on how to create a shortcut if you don't know how to do it.

28:47 Ryan Grant: Perfect. Another one is touching on going from self-managed to managed, and or from managed to self-managed. How does that work? Can you pass it from the account to another account, type thing?

29:04 Nancy Wu: Right, okay. So let's say if the strata corporation owns their account with us, then they can decide whatever they want to do with their account, and then if they want to allow access to the management company. But let's say if you're currently using PowerStrata via your management company, and let's say you want to become self-managed, then you'll have to ask your management company if they are willing to release the account to you.

29:41 And it depends, right, it varies from company to company. And if they say, no, we spent a lot of time or money on setting up this account, they just only provide the archive to you, then you'll have to set up an account from scratch if you do want to continue using PowerStrata. But yeah, if they say fine, we're happy to release the account to you, then you can just continue using the account.

30:12 Ryan Grant: You'll migrate it to them, basically, then. Great. Doesn't look like we have any more questions there, so I guess I'll just reiterate that we'll be able to put any other information you guys provide us onto the BC Strata Tech website too when we release the recordings. So everyone will be able to grab a slide deck, or a pricing sheet or something like that that you guys want us to provide to them, so they'll be able to find it there.

30:42 And they can always contact you guys just like you have on this slide, at powerstrata.com or at that email address. So there's going to be lots of ways to make sure that everyone is able to get in contact.

30:55 Nancy Wu: Exactly.

30:55 Ryan Grant: Information, yeah.

30:58 Nancy Wu: Thank you so much everyone, and thanks Ryan for having us.

31:01 Ryan Grant: No worries, thank you so much, enjoy your afternoon.

31:08 Nancy Wu: Yeah, you too, bye.