Two Verified Gaps
These are the two claims on this page sourced directly from Buildium's own public pricing page and documentation, not inference. Everything else on this page compares what CommunityPay has built against what Buildium has publicly stated — where Buildium hasn't published a claim, we say so rather than guess. Buildium is a large platform with negotiated, volume-based pricing; the published list-price figures on this page won't match every association's actual quote, and we say that plainly in Section 2.
No published CIRA-standard fund reporting
Buildium's own blog describes "GAAP-recognized reporting" — balance sheets, bank reconciliations, cash flow statements. No product page or help article describes a CIRA-specific statement set: changes in fund balances, RSI, budget-and-actual, or per-fund cash flows.
25+ CIRA-standard statements, generated live
Balance sheet, changes in fund balances, budget-and-actual, RSI, cash flows by fund — the statement set an association's own audit actually requires, not general-purpose GAAP reporting adapted after the fact.
No published resale certificate feature
Buildium publishes educational blog content about HOA resale packages, but no product page or help-center article describes an in-app resale certificate generator or a named third-party partner for it.
Resale certificates and condo questionnaires from live ledger data
Statute-mapped resale certificates and Fannie 1076 / Freddie 476 condo questionnaires, generated directly from the association's own accounting records — no handoff to a separate vendor or platform.
Total Cost Over Time
Buildium and AppFolio both sell on a promotional entry rate: a discounted platform fee and, often, a waived transaction fee for the first year or two. Buildium's own pricing page shows this directly — on its Premium tier, incoming EFT is free for the first 12 months, then $0.60 per transaction. We say plainly where that helps a large association more than we currently can: at real negotiated volume, Buildium's per-transaction ACH pricing can beat CommunityPay's on raw cost alone, at least in the promotional years. Where CommunityPay pulls ahead is the shape of the cost over time.
| Fee | CommunityPay | Buildium (published, list price) |
|---|---|---|
| Outgoing vendor ACH/EFT payment | $0, included — every plan | $0.99 per transaction, every tier |
| Incoming resident payment (ACH) | Fee is itemized to the association, not charged to the resident or absorbed by the manager | $2.35 (Essential) / $1.35 (Growth) / free 12 months then $0.60 (Premium) |
| Platform fee after year one | Flat — does not increase after signing | Promotional-rate structure; published tiers step from a discounted entry rate |
| Additional bank account setup | No per-account fee | $99 per account beyond tier allowance |
| Entry-tier monthly price (list) | See pricing | $62/mo (Essential) – $400/mo (Premium) |
Enforcement & System of Record
This is where "enterprise" stops being a marketing word and starts meaning something specific: every posting evaluated against a fixed rule set before it lands, logged whether it passes or not. Buildium does not publish claims in this category — it's built as general-purpose property management accounting, not an enforcement layer over the ledger.
| Feature | CommunityPay | Buildium |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-posting transaction evaluation (patent-pending architecture) | 18 enforcement guards, every transaction | No |
| Immutable decision log | SHA-256 hashed, append-only | No |
| Fund segregation enforcement | Automated, blocks cross-fund violations | Discussed as best practice; no enforced feature published |
| Automatic bank reconciliation | Three-way, bank = GL = client | Transaction matching + read-only bank connections |
| Token-gated CPA audit portal | SHA-256 hashed tokens, no login required | No |
| Enterprise debt subledger | Event-sourced, covenant evaluation | No |
| Reserve funding status report (RSI) | Institutional packet, SHA-256 hashed | No |
| Multi-state resale compliance profiles | 10 states, 14 profiles | No published feature |
| Vendor ACH payments | Included, no additional fee | $0.99 per transaction, all tiers |
Reporting, Legal Corpus & Institutional Tools
Beyond enforcement, this is the depth a real audit or lending relationship actually requires — CIRA-standard financial statements, a living record of the statutes a certificate cites, and workflow-driven accountability for resident handling instead of a support chatbot.
| Feature | CommunityPay | Buildium |
|---|---|---|
| CIRA-standard financial reporting | 30+ statements — balance sheet, changes in fund balances, budget-and-actual, RSI, cash flows by fund | General-purpose GAAP reporting (balance sheet, bank rec, cash flow) — no CIRA-specific statement set published |
| Token-gated CPA audit portal | No login required, scope-controlled per engagement, every access logged | No |
| Living legal corpus (patent-pending architecture) | Statute, case law, session law & regulation tracking with sourced quotes | No |
| Condo questionnaire API (Fannie 1076 / Freddie 476) | Auto-filled from live ledger data | No |
| Resident handling | Workflow-driven assignment and task routing with accountability tracked to completion — not a Q&A chatbot | General AI assistant included at Essential tier — scope not published |
| Resident statement access | Available to all residents | Not published as a distinct capability |
| CARIScore — community association risk index | 5-component, 0–100 score for lenders, insurers & buyers | No |
| Budget builder | Native to the ledger — ties budget lines directly to GL accounts | Included |
| Full ledger read/write access for board & manager | Every entry itemized, no curated-report ceiling | Not published as a distinct capability |
| AI-driven AP automation | AI OCR, deterministic vendor matching, and a per-HOA inbox that reads incoming invoices, enters bills, and routes them to approval | No published feature |
| Deterministic account-role matching (FLASH) | Scored, rule-based lookup by account role — not an LLM guess, so it can't hallucinate an account | No published feature |
Governance, Trust & Vendor Risk
The controls a board actually needs when real money and real vendors are involved — separation of duties on approvals, trust funds that reconcile against the bank and the client independently, and vendors verified before they get paid, not after something goes wrong.
| Feature | CommunityPay | Buildium |
|---|---|---|
| Trust accounting, three-way reconciliation | Bank = GL = client, automated daily | No published feature |
| Board approval workflow & separation of duties | Dollar-threshold approval tiers, treasurer/payer separation, self-approval controls | Optional second-person review on reconciliation adjustments; no published payment-approval workflow |
| Vendor license, bond & insurance monitoring | Automated daily checks before a vendor gets paid | No |
| Fraud detection on payments | Velocity limits, pattern analysis | No published feature |
| Violation tracking | Included | Included — photos, automated notices, homeowner portal visibility |
| Two-factor authentication | Available on every account | Not independently verified from Buildium's public documentation |