Should we pay for the management company software?

Usually it should be part of the management fee, and increasingly it is not. A separate technology, platform, or portal fee — often a per-unit monthly charge — has become common, and it is one of the additions Boards most often accept without asking what changed.

The honest version: the software is the company's operating tool. It is how they produce your financials and manage your work orders. Billing the association separately for it is billing you for their cost of doing business, which is a pricing decision rather than a service.

The less clear-cut version is genuinely optional resident-facing technology — a branded app, e-voting, package tracking, reservation systems. Those are products with a cost, and paying for them separately is reasonable if the Board actually wanted them.

Three questions. Is the fee mandatory or can we decline it. What specifically do we get that we would not otherwise. And if we leave, what happens to the data in it — which loops directly back to whether you can export your own ledger. A platform fee attached to a platform you cannot get your records out of is the worst version of this arrangement.