All posts by Praveen G P

Managing Committees take note!

In our aim to serve you better, we have released new enhancements on ApnaComplex Accounting Module.

Penalty Calculation Engine:

The Apnacomplex Penalty Calculation Engine is a powerful tool that calculates penalties in case of late payments. It can be configured to support the rules against late payments in any society. However, the interplay of factors can often make it difficult to explain the final amount to the members. With our new enhancement, you can now view the detailed calculations by the engine. The user can simply click the link that is next to the penalty charge to receive a full statement. Admins can also access this during the process. The icon is available against each penalty calculation. When clicked, it opens a new window to show you the full break-up.

A new way of penalty calculation:

ApnaComplex has always supported factors like a fixed penalty or penalties based on outstanding dues. With the new enhancement, you can now charge penalties based on area (plot area, super built-up area or terrace area). This allows you more flexibility. Once you save the penalty scheme this option is also available for recurring invoices.

To experience this new option:

1. Please go to Income ->Member Income -> Penalty link
2. Here you can create a new penalty scheme. Identify the charge heads to which penalty becomes applicable.
3. In Penalty Type field – select “Per sqft” – update the penalty amount for defaulters / late paying units.
4. Update rest of the fields and save.
5. Run the same manually (or configure recurring invoice) to calculate penalty amounts that can be directly invoiced.

These enhancements are available at no additional cost with the new update. If you have any queries on the above, please contact us at support@apnacomplex.com

It’s that time of the year again. The whole country reverberates to the joy of celebrations over a five-day period. There’s music, food, light and an air of prosperity all around! Yes, we’ll soon be celebrating Diwali, the festival of light that marks the victory of good over evil.

Celebrated with great joy and festivities in most parts of India, it is marked by the lighting of lamps, crackers, exchange of greetings and gifts, buying gold, decorating of home and sharing sweets with family and friends.

Along with all the above, the festival of Diwali has also become associated with firecrackers that cause injuries and leave people with burns, loss of eyesight, damage to the ears and to property if adequate care is not taken. Every year, there is a significant number of burns and other injuries that are reported during the festival.

Dos and Don’ts:

It is therefore important that each one of us who is celebrating with firecrackers follow a few Dos and Don’ts to ensure that Diwali ends as a happy festival for one and all. If you are a member of the Managing Committee in your residential complex, make sure you list down your Dos and Don’ts so that every resident is aware of what they should and should not do to make it a festival that everyone enjoys.

We provide a list of Dos and Don’ts that you can use as it as is or as a guideline for your apartment complex. You can download the Diwali Do’s and Dont’s poster, print it and post it in your society notice board as is or under your official letterhead.

Designate areas to light firecrackers:

Another important thing that is mandatory in a gated community is to light firecrackers only in designated areas. Some people love to light crackers in their balconies or just outside their flat. This is a breach of fire safety and can lead to serious accidents. It is imperative that the designated spots for lighting firecrackers are clearly marked and the entire community adheres to it.

Firecrackers should not be lit in closed rooms or balconies of the buildings. They also shouldn’t be lit in an area covered with foliage. It is also important to make to make sure that a strict time limit is maintained. Nobody should be allowed to burst crackers beyond a predetermined hour. According to a recent order by the supreme court, this limit is until 10 pm.

Beyond crackers, make sure the open flames of the diyas are not a fire hazard. Make sure they are far away from curtains, open wires, electronics, plastic or paper decoration or any other flammable materials. Teach your children basic fire safety too. It is always better to be safe than sorry.

We offer here a template that your association can customize updating the designated timings, designated areas to light crackers and also update emergency contact numbers. You can share the notice with your residents, print the same on your society’s letterhead and put it up in all notice boards. Download the Diwali Notice template to customize it for your complex.

With a little bit of care and caution, Diwali can be enjoyed by one and all. Take that few additional steps to make sure that the festival leaves only pleasant memories for all involved. We wish you a very happy and safe Diwali!

Renovating a house can be quite demanding in terms of money, time, and effort. There are a few common mistakes that most renovators make, that can prove very costly at the end of the day. Here is how you can avoid these mistakes.

1. Prepare Well

Plan well before you begin the project. Do a lot of research, read plenty of books, and talk to people who have already renovated their houses. You might end up spending hours chalking out the last detail of the plan, but it’ll be worth the time and effort. If you do not have the time or interest to get things done yourself, hiring a professional would be a smart choice.

2. Take accurate Measurements

One of the most basic home renovation tips is to make sure that you take accurate measurements. You spend a lot of money, time, and effort on a home renovation project. Invest in quality measuring tools in order to avoid mistakes that will make you hate your renovated house. Also, be serious about taking accurate measurements, as even small discrepancies can result in drastic changes in the final outcome.

3. Obtain Prerequisite Permissions

While interiors are free from legal scrutiny, huge external projects often require legal permission.  Be on the safe side and avoid unnecessary fines and legal fees by getting all the necessary permissions for the renovation plan. Do keep in mind that your house insurance will not cover damages or injury if you go ahead without required permissions.

4. Invest in Quality

Although it might be very tempting, cutting corners to save money may put your home and yourself at serious risk. High-quality materials are more durable, and hence more expensive. Save yourself the trouble and future expense of frequent repairs by going for good quality products.  The same applies to the labour, interior designer, or engineer you’ll be hiring. Go for the best that you can afford at the moment. If not, wait until you have enough funds.

5. Biting More Than You Can Chew

A common mistake that most renovators make is to plan big and go over the top in their home renovation efforts. Be realistic and factor in your finances, abilities, and resources. It might be a better idea to work on smaller sections than to renovate the entire house at once. Running out of cash, time or interest midway will only leave you with a poorly renovated house.

Make sure you follow these basic home renovation tips to avoid costly mistakes. The golden rule is to plan well and know what you are getting into before you pick up that hammer or paint brush.

The security guard is an extended member of the apartment community.  Finding the right apartment security agency for your community is very important. There are many facets involved in filtering out the best apartment security agency, and these are quite easy to follow and implement. Once you properly list out and analyze your expectations from an apartment security agency, you will be well on your way to finding the right one.

1. Background Checks

A comprehensive background check is extremely important while selecting a security candidate. Candidates need to be well trained with all the necessary certification. Look for those with prior experience, especially in night shifts, patrolling and log maintenance. Retired policemen also make excellent security candidates. Also, remember to look out for past performance records and any possible criminal history. The safest way to hire good security personnel is through a security agency. Ask them to provide the records of your preferred candidates and remember to follow-up regularly.

2. Effective Equipment

An apartment security agency will provide all guards with a pager, but this will hardly be effective in helping the guard take immediate action. Your contract needs to include a section demanding that all guards from the agency should be properly equipped with radios, cell phones, flashlights, notebooks, pens and vehicles. Providing the security guard with a list of emergency contacts and a phone line will also prove useful. Dress code and attire/uniform are also extremely important.

3. Contractual Issues

It is important that the contract is drawn out carefully. The contract should make it clear that the guard and the agency will be held responsible for any damage due to negligence. Often security agencies include an indemnity clause in the contract that works in their favour. Read the contract carefully and keep an eye out for such hidden costs.

4. Log Maintenance

Log maintenance is an effective way to track the productivity of your security personnel. It should be included in your contract. The entries should be detailed and thorough. Instruct them to record everything; their patrol routes, the entry and exit of visitors or delivery agents, movement of items through the gate, etc. Not only is this helpful in case of an incident, but it also helps locate problems that may arise in the future and help avoid them.

Good security guards are a necessity for an apartment complex that touts of being a safe haven for its residents. Get the insights of every person from your apartment association while framing certain clauses of your contract, and once an agency has been selected, open all channels of communication between the residents and the guards in order to make things smoother and easier for both parties. You can search through the ApnaComplex database of security agencies and find the one that meets your requirements.

Maintenance collection is a task that recurs every month. Committee members need to ensure that each unit in the apartment complex pays what is due and is done so in a timely manner. This is a long undertaking in itself. However, in many cases, these transactions are made in cash. While this is convenient in many cases and helps clear any immediate payments that need to be made, cash transactions come with a few pitfalls that are not easy to ignore.

Inefficiency
The time of maintenance payment sees a lot of activity within an apartment complex. Often, the committee members have to knock on individual doors to collect the dues. In other cases, the residents flock to the committee office to make the payments. Payments also need to be eventually collected and recorded from the defaulters. This takes up a lot of time from the committee member’s schedule.

Safety concerns
One of the main concerns with cash transactions is safety. When there are multiple units within an apartment complex, the amount of cash that is exchanged is a considerable sum. This opens up the possibility of misplacing or miscounting the amount. It also makes it open to theft. Further, the cash collected needs to be physically deposited in a bank. Driving around the streets with a large amount of cash can even put you at risk.

Inaccuracy
With an influx of cash payments, it falls on the committee members to ensure that the amount is recorded and reconciled. In an absence of an automated system, it has to be done manually. This leaves room for human error. The issue further extends even to cheque payments. In case of a bounced cheque, bookkeeping becomes long and tedious and prone to errors.

With tools like ApnaComplex, maintenance collections can be made almost effortless. It also sends out reminders for payments and draws out a defaulters list. ApnaComplex also offers a one of a kind and convenient Collection Gateway where members can do a NEFT/IMPS transfer of their maintenance dues to a unique “Account Number” issued by ApnaComplex. With Collection Gateway, ledgers are updated automatically with details of the amount transferred by the member and payment receipts are issued automatically. This eliminates the need for cash transactions and manual effort by the treasurer or accounts office. Going cashless has never been easier!

At the end of a working week, all everybody wants to do is relax and spend some time with family. However, every month there is one event that can get in the way of doing that: maintenance collection. A few years back, the vicious cycle of payment dues billing, reminders and door-to-door maintenance collections kept most of the apartment management associations on their toes. Add the issues of defaulters and manual bookkeeping, and the weekends could easily get as busy as the rest of the week.

Thanks to technology, the days when apartment management associations were reaching out to residents on a one-to-one basis to collect maintenance are long gone. Management associations now use sophisticated apartment management software, like ApnaComplex, to simplify their maintenance collection process to an extent of a single mouse click!

How has ApnaComplex helped the management associations in timely collections?

1. A timely reminder for payments:
Instead of sending reminders to each and every resident one by one,  the apartment management software empowers the management association to now send automatic reminders to all residents at one go via email/SMS. Residents don’t mean to default on maintenance payments, it’s their hectic schedules and absence of a timely reminder mechanism that makes them miss out on submitting the maintenance charges on time. A reminder system reduces the default rate up to a great extent.

2. Ease of paying maintenance charges:
TheApnaComplex App comes with a collection gateway that automates monthly maintenance payments. This eases the residents from the whole ordeal of coming to the society office just to drop a cheque or pay in cash.

3. Saves Reconciliation Efforts:
Manually recording the amount received from the residents and reconciling all the payments can be quite a long process. With the advent of powerful tools like ApnaComplex, the entire reconciliation is taken care by the App.  

4. Filter the list of defaulters:
The apartment management software enables the management association to filter the list of defaulters. The entire process gets automated and a list of residents whose maintenance payments are due can be easily drawn out along with the penalty to be charged from them. Emails/SMS to be sent out to defaulters is also automated through the software reducing the manual work up to a great extent.

One of the misconceptions was that apartment management solutions are very costly. In many cases, this misconception was cleared, when a lot of apartments started using ApnaComplex, a cost-effective subscription-based leading apartment management software with zero hardware costs and an ongoing support. The cost of the software is directly proportional to the number of units an apartment has, making it more economical than ever for the apartment management associations.

It’s that time of the year! For the next nine nights, most Apartment Complexes will be full of lights, colourful outfits and catchy beats that nobody can resist: it’s Navratri! Most people come out of their houses to participate in the Garba and Dandiya that’s held within the complex. Naturally, there are visitors from outside your immediate community who come to enjoy the festivities. So, during the Navratri festival, security measures need to be tightened in every housing society for internal safety.

Security Measures To Be Taken Before Navratri

Some common security measures need to be enforced during Navratri as a general resident movement with the housing society will be at an all-time high during this nine-day festival. A few security measures that can be taken up are:

• Prior to the commencement of the Navratri festival, a complete identity check of all guards should be conducted.
• A photograph of those working within the housing society should be recorded and kept handy.
• Record the entry of every visitor along with the name of the people they are visiting.
• Allow any visitor only after verifying with residents.
• Cars allowed inside the gate should be given a parking sticker to be displayed the whole time it is within the complex.
• Install CCTV cameras to monitor the entire complex thoroughly.
• The names of all the caterers, technicians and entertainers hired for the event should be recorded and their identity, verified.

This dance event commences in the night and continues till the wee hours of the morning, so it is all the more necessary to provide proper security during this festival. ApnaComplex can help you ease your security concerns. With products like Gatekeeper and Vehicle Sentry at your disposal, you can make security during this Navratri easy and efficient.

Garage sales are usually a great way to foster community bonding. Neighbours can get together to set up stalls and buy and sell household clutter that may be handy to someone else. Setting up stalls in the common areas or basements is a fun way to spend a weekend together.

In India, household items are often used to their absolute demise, at the end of which they are completely unusable. So, naturally, garage sales are typically not quite as popular. But with festivals like Dussehra and Diwali around the corner, most families should be gearing up for a home makeover. Typically this involves repainting the walls, changing the upholstery and a good top to bottom cleaning. This is the perfect time to fish out items that are not in use.

Setting up a Stall

1) Pick out things you want to sell
Garage Sales are built on the premise that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Anything from clothes, books, unused furniture, utensils, is fair game. This clutter can usually be found under beds, inside storage units, out on the balcony, in the storeroom, or on the terrace. The general rule of thumb of cleaning is to pick out things that have not been used in about three years.

2) Price everything fairly
Based on the condition and years of use, slash the prices of every item by 50 to 75%. Put price tags on all the products. It would also help if you put down the original price next to the selling price. Check online stores to check the current prices of similar products.

3) Set up your wares
Your customers are more likely to buy your products if you make them look presentable. Make sure all your items are clean and dust-free. Set up tables and stools to place your products on. If you’re selling clothes, put them on hangers or fold them up neatly. Make sure everything is visible and ready for easy perusal. Keep a register or notepad handy to track your sales easily. Also, remember to keep plenty of change on hand. This makes transactions simpler.

Garage Sale as a community event

Garage Sales are a fun way to bring the entire society together. It can be turned into a community event by setting up a number of stalls and turning it into a temporary mini market. Not only can you sell old used products, but artists and chefs can set up stalls for their homemade masterpieces. Involve children into the mix and help them set up a mini-games stall. It can be a fun learning experience in entrepreneurship and quite frankly, practical maths.

Make it for a good cause

Many of us usually donate used items to charity or to the needy. However, quite often these items go unused even in the charity. There are either no takers for that particular item or the product is totally unusable. Monetary donations are a preferred option. So take the money raised in your sale, (in part or whole) and donate it to a good cause of your choice. Not only will your apartment complex have fun, but you could bring a smile to somebody in need.

With the season of goodwill just around the bend, why not give this a go? ApnaComplex provides the perfect tools to help you organize the Garage Sales. Conduct a survey to gather other interested people, create a separate group and start a new discussion. Collaboration has never been simpler!

ApnaComplex has always tried its best to offer the best possible facilities and tools to its users. Communication gap has always been a problem in most of the apartments. There is a lack of an effective communication system among the committee members or between the apartment management committee members and residents. Understanding this gap, ApnaComplex offers various communication tools to its users for their convenience.

As an ApnaComplex member (whether you are part of the apartment management committee or not) you may need to do one of the following at some point in time:  

a) Communicate with all residents

b) Send out personal or one-to-one messages

c) Communicate with Administrator of your portal

d) Communicate with Committee

e) Communicate with Registered Owners

f) Communicate with sub-groups of residents

When you need to send a message across to an individual or a group in your residential complex, there are different communication options to choose from for different communication scenarios. Here is everything you can do with the Communication feature on your ApnaComplex App

1. Notice Board

The notice board is a foolproof way to get a message across to all or particular residents. The message can be sent through the App, or even by email or SMS. It also reaches numbers that are on DND. While sending out the notice you can even attach relevant files or documents.

2. Discussion Forum

The forums allow you to start or join in discussions with fellow residents. You can access all the past and ongoing discussions easily. However, if you choose, you can restrict access to certain discussions to a few residents like committee members. All your society-related discussions will be easily available in one place.

3. Surveys & Polls

You can create polls and surveys to take the opinions of the residents. The polls can be customised to be accessible to either certain residents or all of them. You can customise it further to make it multiple choice, rating system, and with an option to respond anonymously! It is all up to you.

4. Groups

You can even create groups or clubs within the society. Start a discussion board for your sub-committee (or even hobby clubs!)  with all the relevant documents and a complete mailing list. Connecting with your neighbours has never been easier!

5. Photo Gallery

Share photos and create albums within your community. Photos of your community events should now be easily available to all the residents easily.

6. Repository

Keep your important documents handy. Upload and share useful documents like bye-laws, dos and don’ts, lease agreements under tags and categories. Again, this too is customizable to who can view and access each of the documents.

7. Community Wiki

Create a hub for your society. Share information, publish articles and tips, collaborate with other residents and much, much more. allow all your residents to contribute to the same. Create a one-stop information centre for all things related to your society.

Here at ApnaComplex, we understand that a housing society is a close-knit community. What is a community without communication? As such, these tools are always at your disposal. Now you can know and collaborate with all your neighbours with ease!

With gated societies becoming the new norm for community living, security at the gates is of utmost importance. While security cameras and pen-and-paper visitor logs have always been a go-to solution, they often fall short in tracking the traffic in and out of the gate.

Why ApnaComplex Gatekeeper?

Gatekeeper by ApnaComplex is a proven technological solution to the security needs in your Apartment Complex. Not only is it convenient, but it also provides the best value-for-money. Gatekeeper is part of the integrated ApnaComplex mobile App that also provides other apartment management solutions. It is a complete package for all your apartment management needs.

Gatekeeper tackles several security concerns that may arise in a gated community. A simple mobile application will allow you to track visitors, delivery agents, domestic staff and even your vehicle. Gatekeeper provides not just app-based security but is also easy to integrate with hardware installations like RFID or Biometric devices. We also have a unique feature that provides real-time notification when your child’s school bus is at the gate!

What is more, at ApnaComplex, we take Data Privacy very seriously. Your information is saved on our database with several layers of security. Access to this data is unavailable to anybody without your express permission.

How to join ApnaComplex Gatekeeper?

You can join ApnaComplex in three easy steps:

1) Create an online portal.
If you are a member of the management committee, all you have to do is fill out the form. We have a step-by-step guide to get you through the verification process.

2) Provide details
Log in and enter the details about your complex like the number of blocks, apartments and residents. Gatekeeper is now at your service! We also provide a free demo on demand to familiarize you with the app.

3) Download the app
Download the Gatekeeper app for your security staff and start using it. Gatekeeper is also available in regional languages like Marathi, Hindi and Tamil. Language is no longer a problem!

It is that simple! Security for you and your family made hassle-free. You can now manage your entire apartment complex with just a smartphone! ApnaComplex is available on both Android and IOS.