How Board Members and Managers can better collaborate on tasks and ACR’s

Serving as a board member for an HOA can often be challenging as they volunteer their time and effort in making the community enjoyable for residents.  A board member’s duties entail planning the community budget, obtaining a reserve funds analysis, hiring the right vendors, and working with residents on their home improvement project requests.  With the abundance of tasks on their to-do-list, keeping track of all these tasks manually can get difficult.  Thus, an association board will oftentimes employ a management company’s services to advise them on business decisions and to implement community activities.  When the management company provides board members with strong tracking tools and insights they need, managing the community can become a more enjoyable and rewarding experience for all.

In Pilera, HOA community managers and board members can manage tasks and architecture change requests from start to finish while keeping everyone informed.  In this month’s Manager Toolkit, we review what managers and board members can do to effectively track their individual tasks, get insights on all community tasks, collaborate with other board members and managers, and improve the approvals process for resident architecture change requests.    

1) Create and assign tasks to managers or other board members

Board members and managers can create tasks before, during, and after board meetings to handle activities such as budget planning and vendor bids.  Once they add details to the task, they can assign it to themselves, another board member, or a community manager as well as set the due date to follow up on the task.  The task management functionality allows board members and managers to collaborate beyond their regular board meetings as the task progresses by submitting comments, changing the status, and reassigning the task to another for their input.  Every comment, status change, and reassignment is tracked for the task, providing board members and managers with detailed insight and bringing more alignment to their shared community goals. 

2) Approve architecture change requests

Board members and managers now can view all architecture change requests within Pilera and handle the approvals process from initiation to completion. As the request progresses, they can update the due date, reassign it to another board member or manager, or change the status. They can also add comments that are visible to all board members and managers only or allow residents to view the comments.

3) Gain high level or granular insights via the dashboard

Dashboards give high-level and granular insights to help make important community decisions. Through the dashboards, board members and managers can filter criteria on tasks and ACRs to meet their business needs such as ticket status, who it is assigned to, category (for tasks only), date range, and more. Here are some ways the dashboard can provide actionable insights:

• Board members and managers can both see if anyone is overloaded with a task or ACR. The workload can then be shifted as needed to improve productivity and reduce response time.
• Identify how many tasks are still open or have been completed in a current date range.  Managers can show the board members all the work that has been completed for them, and board members can get insight on which tasks are open and the status.
• Know whether rejected ACRs are increasing or decreasing over time. An increase may be indicative that the governing documents need to be reviewed and the board should adjust the ACR section for better clarity.

4) Generate reports to review at the board meeting

Based on the criteria selected in the dashboard, managers and board members can then download excel reports to take offline for further analysis or to review during their board meetings or frequent board to management meetings.

The task management and architecture change request tools in Pilera are designed to help board members and community managers work together on a variety of community responsibilities as well as bring more efficiency in their workflow. Board members can collaborate with one another and with management, assign tickets, set due dates, and gain the insights they need for decision-making.  With all tasks, ARCs, and insights in one place, the workflow is made easier and more enjoyable for board members and community managers.