Concepts
Foundational explanations of HOA accounting, fund management, and compliance. The principles that inform every feature we build.
Compliance & Reality
What Does "Percent Funded" Actually Mean?
Your reserve study says you're "65% funded." But funded for what? When? This metric is more nuanced than most board members realize.
What Is Fund Accounting (Really)?
Fund accounting isn't just "tracking money in buckets." It's a legal and fiduciary framework that most HOA software gets fundamentally wrong.
What Is Reserve Expense → Component Reconciliation?
When you spend reserve money, which component did it fund? If your software can't answer this instantly, your reserve tracking is theater.
Why Most Accounting Software Is Not Legally Defensible
If you can't defend your books in front of an auditor or a judge, you don't have accounting software—you have a ledger-shaped UI. Board members have fiduciary duties.
Why Reconciliation Must Be Continuous, Not Periodic
Monthly reconciliation is an autopsy. Continuous reconciliation is preventive care. By the time you discover a $50,000 variance at month-end, it's been compounding for 29 days.
Why Reserve Drift Happens
Your reserve study said you'd have $500,000 by now. You have $380,000. What went wrong? Understanding reserve drift is the first step to preventing it.
Foundations
What Is an Idempotency Key?
Click "Submit" twice by accident? Without idempotency protection, you might create duplicate transactions. Here's how enterprise systems prevent this.
What Is Double-Entry Bookkeeping?
Every transaction has two sides. This 500-year-old principle is why your books balance—and why single-entry systems eventually fail.
Systems Integrity
What Is Posting Provenance?
Every journal entry should know exactly how it was created—which rules were applied, which accounts were used, and why. This is posting provenance.
Why Accounting Systems Must Be Deterministic
The same transaction, replayed twice, should not produce two different outcomes. If your accounting system isn't deterministic, it's a random number generator with a ledger UI.
Why Optional Fields Destroy Data Integrity
Every optional field in your accounting system is a future data quality problem. Here's why "required" isn't restrictive—it's protective.
Enterprise Architecture
Why Audit Trails Fail in Most HOA Software
Your software claims to have an "audit trail." But can you prove exactly how every journal entry was created, by whom, under what rules? Most can't.
Why Configuration Changes Must Be Audited Like Financial Transactions
If you can't prove who changed what configuration when, your audit trail has a hole large enough to hide fraud. Configuration is financial infrastructure.
Why Configuration-Driven Posting Beats Hardcoded Accounting Logic
When your posting rules live in code, every change requires a developer. When they live in configuration, accountants control their own system.
Why Time Is the Hardest Problem in Accounting Software
Accounting systems don't fail because they get math wrong. They fail because they forget the past. Your books from January must be explainable by January's rules, not today's.