StrataPress Strata Owners Portal for Self-Managed Strata Corporations

0:00 – StrataPress Origins and Owners Portal

0:00 Sean Jordan: My name is Sean Jordan, I'm co-founder of Simple Strata Solutions. We started a little over 10 years ago. We sell documents online, we operate Canada's largest strata owners portal, called StrataPress. Just a quick introduction: that's myself and co-founder Paul Vanderzee. We've both been in the business of building software for large scale applications for over 25 years, and I've also been a council president on three different stratas over a 15-year period, and Paul is president with his own strata council, he's been on council for over 10 years as well.

0:40 So we've got some background knowledge, and this kind of was born out of our experience with strata corporations. At least mine: I always provided a website for our strata corporations so that they could access information and communicate with the council and the property manager. This is what it looked like back in 2014, our first version, and it's grown since then. We started as a web system, it was a multi-site WordPress system, that's where the StrataPress name came from.

1:13 And it didn't sell, because you can't just pick up a phone and call a strata corporation, you need to actually go through the gatekeepers, which are the property management companies. And although they liked the idea, they weren't keen on spending 400 bucks a year for a website system to help with their communications. So we went a different route. We started working with property management companies to sell documents online for them, automate the process.

1:39 So that's what we did, automated the process for property management companies so they can automatically sell strata documents and process forms and not lose any revenue on the system. And Realtors, lawyers and notaries could order documents anytime, 24/7, get immediate downloads of documents instead of waiting five days or seven days. They could order Form Bs and Form Fs, and they get new document notifications, text message alerts, and of course all the support needed to get the documents in case there's any problems.

2:14 We're always here online with live chat, phone and email support. So we added strata owners. We took our original platform, which was for strata owners, and we combined it with the sales platform that we have for StrataPress. So now property managers can distribute documents to strata owners, the same documents that Realtors, lawyers and notaries were requesting when they're involved in the sale of strata property. So it also provides the property manager with centralized communication and an easy way to distribute documents.

2:50 So once we had all that running, we introduced a version of our platform for self-managed strata councils, so they take the role of a property manager and provide Strata Property Act compliant Form B and Form F certificates, generate revenue for their properties, and provide transparent communication with the strata owners. So it makes the whole experience online a lot easier, a lot simpler and a lot more efficient.

3:20 So, we know why, of course. This is the reason why we provided a platform for self-managed stratas: there's more and more self-managed stratas every year. The bar for getting professional management is set fairly high, I think a lot of companies don't take stratas smaller than 60 units, so that's the primary reason. And with that in mind we just started developing strata management tools. So every month we have new releases and new features we work on, and all those features are based on the feedback we've received over the last eight years, to make something that's really great, works for everybody.

4:01 So, just in general: revenue generating document sales, Form B certificate generation, all these advantages for this platform.

4:09 – Owning Your Data and Upcoming Features

4:09 Sean Jordan: One thing we like to say is, you do own your data. It doesn't matter who's managing your strata corporation through StrataPress, you can change your account from self-managed to professionally managed, and we can move your property into any portfolio of any professional management company that's using StrataPress, but you keep your data. In a lot of cases you'll work with a property management company, and once you decide to leave, if there's a reason to leave, trying to get your data back from them, or what they've collected, is pretty much nearly impossible, so you pretty much have to start over.

4:46 So in our platform you can take your data with you wherever you want to manage it. Some of the upcoming features we're looking at: implementing a vendor marketplace to provide services through companies that provide services for strata corporations. We're looking into and working on an AI chat assistant and document management system, so we've been working hard on that, it's actually pretty exciting. Electronic meeting and voting, strata accounting services, and strata owner and council education in partnership with the Canadian Condominium Institute BC chapter.

5:24 All of our data is stored on Microsoft Azure servers located in Canada. So just a quick look at the interface. This is what a strata owner would see on our platform. It's a clean design, clutter-free, very simple. Get access to documents, calendars, and a few of the communication options which I'll go over in a minute. The council's dashboard looks the same, but there's a few more options for them: reports, sales reports, of course an orders section here, that's when people request Form B or Form F certificates.

6:03 The only thing you have to respond to. If anybody's just purchasing documents it just provides information on who purchased the documents, how much was collected, and those kinds of details.

6:14 – Document Folders, Permissions and Naming

6:16 Sean Jordan: The management of documents, really simple. It's a very familiar folder type system. You can right-click on any of these folders and control permissions. If you see, it's council only here, so only the council would see this folder. Specific folders for depreciation reports, and something we call Form B required, which automatically adds documents to a Form B request so you can remain compliant, and check that off. So, simple design there.

6:41 Consistency with time sensitive documents: these are financials, so these are month end financials. When you click on add document it's going to ask you what type of document it is and the date for the month. And it doesn't matter what the PDF file name is when you upload it: you upload it to StrataPress, it renames the document based on the information you provide. Also does this with minutes of meetings as well, so you've got your council, AGM and the date of those council minutes.

7:12 So it's a great reference for Realtors to make sure they have all the documents, proper sequence, nothing's missing, and there's consistency there.

7:16 – Sending Updates and Tracking Delivery

7:21 Sean Jordan: Every property we have on StrataPress has this type of feature for council minutes and financials. Communication through StrataPress, really easy. The strata owners portal, you can send updates. This is just an example of an update, it just looks like an email. Put in a subject, put in your message, add an attachment, in this case the month end financials for May. And when you add an attachment you can actually select a folder, and you can upload those documents directly to the folder that they are required to be in, so you can do that all in one step.

7:55 And then you can target who you want this update to be sent to: owners and tenants, owners, or council. You can allow comments or turn off comments. This is just one type of communication option we have, there's four, we'll go over those in a minute. But this is as simple as that. We're working on a way that you can actually reply to these emails as well if your comments are allowed, but currently it sends out an entire message with the attachment to all the owners that are registered, and they don't have to come to the portal to get the document.

8:25 A unique thing about this: when you look at something that's sent out, the month end financials for May, and you click this little view emails tab up at the top, it'll give you an idea exactly who received this update and the status. Was it delivered, bounced? You'll have a green light or a red light if it bounced. You can follow up on that or resend it to them separately.

8:52 And you can see the last time the document was opened, and if it was delivered, if it wasn't, if it was delivered not opened. Sometimes it just means it went to their spam. You can also go directly to a strata owner's profile and click on the email tab, and that'll show you all the documents and emails and updates that they've received specific to that owner. So you can track every bit of information, make sure everybody's getting what they're supposed to get.

9:20 – Processing Form B With Two Signatures

9:24 Sean Jordan: One of the things that's unique with the strata owners portal for the self-managed stratas: the strata owners, the council members, get access to orders. And when somebody makes a request for a Form B or Form F, they open the order and have to process this. It's a step-by-step, really simple form to fill out, and it basically walks you through it. So once you've completed the form you send it to a second strata council member who can review it and authorize it, so it has two signatures.

9:54 And it has a checklist for the rules, the budget, rental disclosure statement and depreciation report, just to make sure those are attached to the form, so you can remain completely compliant with the Strata Property Act. So this is what the form looks like, just a quick snapshot. There's a few more questions, of course, in here, and you just check off the boxes and fill in the information based on the information you have.

10:16 Eventually we're going to make this basically a one-click Form B, so we should be able to attach all the information we collect, press generate a Form B just by clicking on the button, and reviewing it, sign off on it. So it makes it really simple. So, strata owners portal: currently we have 1,500 strata corporations on board. Now, most of those are professionally managed. 31,000 registered BC strata owners.

10:47 They get access to transparent communication with the council and their strata management, they can receive updates, participate in discussions, send notifications, and they can submit requests if they need something. So a request would be like reporting an irrigation problem, maybe a broken line, or require a new fob, those type of things.

11:04 – Creating an Account and Booking a Demo

11:07 Sean Jordan: And all the councils get notified on requests from owners, just so it doesn't get ignored and doesn't get lost in the communications. So, to create an account at StrataPress just go to stratapress.com, go to register an account and click on that link. And then you would choose from the website the option for self-managed strata council member. You just have one council member initially create the account for your strata corporation.

11:35 We will call that person who creates the account and go over kind of what the expectations are as far as keeping documents up to date, and how to bring not only their documents on board, which will help, but also how to invite the other owners to get on board and benefit from the use of it. So if you want to know more, book a demo. For a demo, email info@stratapress.com, address it to me, or you can call this number, 250-412-6595, and we can book a demo for you and your council.

12:09 And this can be done on weekends and evenings as well, because people are busy and during the day doesn't always work. But that's how we can do it. So I'll just bring up the interface here, and I will put my speaker back on and I can answer any question. What you're looking at here is an actual dashboard, lots of little nuances behind it, and I can show you that stuff on a demo.

12:41 Ryan Grant: Are you sharing your screen now, Sean? Because we only see the slides still. You might have to reshare your screen for the web browser show.

12:55 Sean Jordan: Oh sorry, I must have to share a different screen.

13:05 Ryan Grant: There's a bit of a delay with the… just so you know.

13:10 Sean Jordan: Oh yeah, it's a little difficult. Oh I see, I brought it in as a different… there we go.

13:24 Ryan Grant: Yeah, let's just… back to the screen again. I think if you click share entire screen then you'll be able to show, or if you can find the Chrome tab that you want to share.

13:56 Sean Jordan: Okay, I'm just up the page here. Owners, by the way, can have access to multiple accounts, so multiple properties. Anybody have any questions?

15:04 Ryan Grant: Currently there weren't any questions that come in yet.

15:08 – Pricing for Self-Managed Stratas

15:11 Sean Jordan: I'll talk about pricing, by the way, I didn't mention it. For self-managed stratas the subscription is $15 per unit per year, and if you get a three-year subscription it's $10 per unit per year. It's the same as basically signing up for two years, get a third year for free. And unlimited storage and unlimited number of accounts for your strata corporation. It's all based on number of units.

15:54 Ryan Grant: There is a question about document storage. Looks like you're a realtor and they know about the document storage aspect, so they're happy about seeing the owner portal, but they want to know more about the document storage system and if there's any more enhancements coming. But I believe you have another presentation on that later today, right?

16:27 Sean Jordan: Yeah, we've got a presentation for Realtors, because that's part of our audience, and also property managers.

16:44 Ryan Grant: Perfect. And it doesn't look like there's anything else right now. Did you have anything else you'd like to show them, or we can…

16:53 Sean Jordan: I mean, there's a lot of features in it, a lot of nuances to the program. I'm just going to give you a basic overview of what it can do, and from there we can go into details on the demo.

17:12 Ryan Grant: Perfect. Then with that, it looks like we'll just give people another minute here. Oh, somebody did say, I think I figured out the echo problem, I had another window open running the original video. So it's easier to understand, you know, it doesn't sound like a bunch of people talking at once. It looks like you can go in the comment section and some people posted there.

17:41 Sean Jordan: Oh okay, comments, comments.

17:48 – Onboarding and Bulk Document Uploads

17:48 Sean Jordan: Also I see chat, but I don't see any… oh, here we go. How long does it take, uploading documents for new accounts? We can help you with that, we help with onboarding, we can help you set that up, we give you a Dropbox. But if you were to do it yourself, a typical property management, or sorry, single strata, it wouldn't take that long really, because you can drag and drop into the folders.

18:12 And I'll show you what the folders look like. We can help you, like I said, with bulk uploading. We do that for property management companies, I'll go into that in the next presentation. But property management companies, we do all their month-end financials for like 150 properties just by bulk uploading the documents, they don't have to do it individually. So, document folders: yeah, doesn't take long. You get a set of default folders that are set up for you, and from there you can just open up the folder, drag and drop the information in there.

18:48 The minutes of meetings and financials, those are the only ones where you have to do them individually, and you would just open up a folder here and go to… well, this is a demo account, it's on staging, this is our staging server, so it doesn't run as quickly and I don't have all the documents set up. But just go into the folder and click on that add document, pick the date, upload the document, renames everything for you.

19:22 Ryan Grant: There is another question about the limit, how many documents can be stored on the portal as well.

19:29 Sean Jordan: We don't have any limit for the documents. Currently you can upload as much as you require. We kind of encourage you to put up all the documents you want to archive with your strata. And see if I can go back up to the folders here. Yeah, so there's no limit on that, you can go back as far as you want. I mean, there's some stratas on our system that have 12,200 documents.

19:57 Ryan Grant: Wow.

19:57 Sean Jordan: And we've got close to 225,000, last I looked, documents online, and that's growing by two to 300 per day, more. So yeah, no limit on that.

20:15 – Bylaw Infractions and Communication Types

20:15 Ryan Grant: Great. And then, can you help with bylaw infractions, is another question.

20:22 Sean Jordan: Yeah, we do have a feature that we're working on right now that uses templates, and it manages bylaw infractions. So you can create a bylaw infraction, send it to a specific owner, and you can track the back and forth with that owner until the bylaw infraction is resolved. And the bylaw infraction itself, we provide templates for the type of bylaw infraction.

20:47 So what you do is you actually take the little segment out of your bylaw, that, you know, might be a pet bylaw, put that into the template, and then when you send a bylaw infraction, you do the pet template, it'll just write out the entire email for you, or the entire message, and it'll drop that part of the bylaws into the template itself so it can be referenced.

21:10 And then it tracks if that message gets delivered, what the replies are, it's all kept in one spot. So that's a new feature we're working on, that's coming out shortly. I didn't really get into the types of communication options, kind of breezed through that, but if we've still got a few minutes then I can tell you. What we have here is four different types of communication. We've got updates, which are sent from the council to all the owners, and you can upload documents at the same time.

21:36 Notices are sent to individual owners, so it doesn't notify the council members, it just sends a little bit of information to an owner, and there could be a discussion if required, and some comments. Or you could send it to a small group of owners. Discussions are created by the council and are usually between council members and selected owners. So if you're doing like a landscaping project and you have some volunteers, a council member may want to provide the details and include the volunteers in that discussion.

22:04 And then requests come from owners to the council or the property manager, and they can send in a request about anything that's on their mind, or something they require, those type of things. So: updates, notices, discussions, requests. There's a calendar here for booking council meetings, things like that. Amenity bookings: so you can create amenities for your property, if it's a private suite or if it's a boardroom, or even booking the elevator, you can create a booking for amenities.

22:36 And of course access to the documents. Try to keep it simple. It's worked really well for years, it's just access to information and communication. Question about security: privacy is maintained through controlling what folder permissions you have. You can control who can view which folders. Let's see, folders can be secured just to access by council only.

23:04 – Backups, Security and Canadian Hosting

23:13 Sean Jordan: The question is about backup, and if we back up everything. We're kind of the backup, because you're providing the documents, so you're putting those backups on our system. Our entire platform's backed up every six hours, 24 hours a day, and there's 10 days of backups that we have. Like I said, all the servers are in Canada. We can grow this thing, it can scale up as large as possible, the Azure system allows us to accommodate anything size-wise.

23:41 The costs aren't prohibitive, they pretty much cover the expense of running the system for the platform at $10 per unit per year. We make our money from selling documents through property management companies, that's our primary. But because self-managed stratas don't sell a lot of documents, we have the subscription, because you might only have five units where maybe one gets sold every three or four years. So for us it's a $20 fee, that's the fee that we're charging for property management companies, so one sale a year just isn't going to cut it, unfortunately.

24:24 But we built this with the council member or the strata owner in mind. I was a strata owner and I wanted to protect our information, and I wanted our strata council and our owners to have access to that information. So that's when I built the first site. I had it on three different stratas for a number of years and people loved it. I was able to manage one strata corporation as president while living in Las Vegas for two years, because we did everything online.

24:54 And this was 12 years ago, we did everything online and we just did our meetings by phone, and everybody was able to stay up to date and everything ran extremely well. So security is top of our mind as well. Both Paul and I have come from a fintech, a lot of experience in fintech building financial platforms for financial companies and protecting people's banking information. So we know what it's like to hire a company to try and break our site and tell us where vulnerabilities are, and never had a problem with that, knock on wood.

25:33 But very tight with security. The weakest points, of course, are the users and their passwords. We try not to keep any personally identifiable information online. Council members can't contact each other directly through our platform, everything goes through council. Nobody's emails are displayed or provided, other than if you're on council, to administer the users and the owners. But everything else, other than an address, a phone number and email, that's as far as the information we collect goes.

26:08 There may be information on specific strata documents, those have to be kept secure by your council, and it is council only folders, things like that.

26:23 Ryan Grant: There was another question: if you can repeat the pricing again, because I guess it was a little echo at that time, but now it's good.

26:32 Sean Jordan: Yeah, for self-managed stratas it's $15 per year per unit, and if you do a three-year subscription it's $10 per unit per year. So a 30 unit strata, $300 per year. It's very competitive with any other, even document storage services out there. I think with Google Docs or Dropbox, those type of things, you're going to be paying more than that just for storing documents. So yeah, best deal is the three-year deal.

27:06 But if you want to try it out for a year, $15. We'll help you with the onboarding, we help you get people on board, show you the simple ways to bring people on board. You can invite them to join, you can add them yourself with a temporary password. If it's a large strata we can import from an Excel sheet. Our largest self-managed strata on here is about 23 units and our smallest is three, and it's all the same rate as far as per unit cost goes.

27:38 – Portal Website and Council-Only Access

27:38 Ryan Grant: Someone else wants to know, does the subscription come with a website? I'm guessing like a strata website.

27:47 Sean Jordan: Well, it's not a personal domain type website, but it is a portal, the strata owners portal. It's dedicated for your strata corporation, and when you log in you will either be assigned to that property, or if you've got access to multiple properties there'll be a list of stratas you can choose from. We do have owners that do have multiple units in different buildings that are even managed by different companies, and they can, without having to log in with different accounts, use one account, they can access multiple properties.

28:17 Ryan Grant: So yeah, they want to know as well, what would be an example of allowing access only for strata council, access only?

28:28 Sean Jordan: Yeah, well, every property has the option to… the council can turn off features, so you can turn off the requests, you can turn off access to documents, you can turn off all the features, or you can just turn on what you want. If you just want them to be able to log in and access documents, turn off all the other features. So you can control things that way.

28:51 Council only: council has a slightly different dashboard. Basically, let me just find the slide here. This is what an owner would see. Council members see a few other things. So this little thing up in the corner, this little three stripe bar that's seen up here, little mini menu, that's what the council has access to that owners don't. And that'll include additional links to editing the property, managing orders, looking at sales.

29:21 Of course council members can see all of the notices that are posted, all the discussions, all the requests. Owners only see the discussions that they've been included in, and owners only see the requests that they've submitted. And under the profile, a council member can look at… just see where that tab is here, right up here.

29:41 – Owner Profiles, Tenants and Exports

29:45 Sean Jordan: There's a few other options that are available now, but personal info, the property info. If the owner has tenants, you can register tenants to receive updates as well, and when they register an update it generates a Form K that gets submitted to the council, and then they can approve the access. Notes: you can just create notes about the property owner, their pet name, birthday, those type of things.

30:06 You can see when they last logged in, you can see the emails that they've received and opened, and you can see any requests or notices that have been submitted through them, either requests they submitted or notices they've been sent. We also have a lot of flexibility with exporting options for owners, you can create custom export options. Owners have a choice, of course, of receiving documents electronically or by mail, so we keep track of who is who as far as those types of options are concerned.

30:34 Like I said, a lot of little nuances that are easier to show in a smaller group demo, but this will give you some idea of the capabilities of the platform. So like I said, 31,000 users. We've been at this, this is what we do full-time, working on improvements, taking feedback.

30:56 Every page on our site has a feedback tab over here on the left or on the right, and you just click on there if you see something that can be improved, or a suggestion, and we put it in our discussions to mull it over and see if it's got benefit for everybody, and then go into development. Got a pretty fast turnaround time on those types of requests.

31:23 So yeah, that's it, pretty straightforward.

31:25 Ryan Grant: Yeah, that was a great presentation, and looks like we had lots of great questions as well that you were able to answer there. Don't see anything else coming in chat right now. Okay great, then I guess with that being said we'll see you later on today for your next presentation.

31:43 Sean Jordan: Yeah, next presentation I'm just going to show you how Realtors are able to order documents online through StrataPress, and what the benefits of doing it through StrataPress are for them.

31:54 Ryan Grant: Perfect. Thank you so much for coming and we'll see you later.

31:57 Sean Jordan: All right, thanks a lot Ryan, thanks everybody, enjoy the other shows.

32:01 Ryan Grant: Yes, take care.