In yet another first, at ApnaComplex , we launch a new “Society Registers” module to specifically cater to Maharashtra based housing societies.
The new module, Society Registers, enables associations and housing societies to comply with some of the regulatory needs as per The Maharashtra Housing Society Act. The Society Registers module is a central place to maintain all data as required by the regulatory authorities in the formats defined per the Society Act.
At present, ApnaComplex supports following registers
Form-J (Register of Members)
Register of Committee Members
Register of Investments
Register of Nomination
Register of Shares
Property Register
Levy Charges Register
Audit Reports Register
Transfer Register
And more are in the pipeline. All data into the registers can be added/modified/deleted with the history of all changes made being automatically stored. Society committee members can print the registers directly or download them into excel as per their needs.
With this addition, ApnaComplex becomes the first and the only web-based solution to cater to specific needs of Maharashtra Societies.
While the registers are created with primary objective to meet needs of Maharashtra based societies, Associations from other parts of the country as well can definitely benefit from them to maintain data in extremely structured way regarding their complex/society.
For example, a Transfer Register helps keep track of the history of a given Flat – who was original owner, and when a re-sale happened and to whom. An Levy Charges Register helps keep track of the history of how corpus fund / maintenance charges are levied in a society and the basis for the same.
ApnaComplex is a web based housing society accounting, management and communication software. It is designed to make the life of residents and owners a lot better by bringing in more transparency and accountability in managing a housing society. Check out the features of ApnaComplex and sign up your society today to get the benefits!
We warmly welcome all owners and residents of Temple Tree Apartments, an apartment complex in Ulsoor area of Bangalore, on to ApnaComplex Portal. The Temple Tree Apartment Owners Association were using another apartment management software earlier that was not able to meet thier needs and hence did a through evaluation and zeroed in on ApnaComplex. Mr. Rajiv Babu, Committee Member of Temple Tree Apartment Owners Association has the following to say on the this occasion:
ApnaComplex is the best Accounting and Management Software for any Housing Society
“As an apartment community, we needed various tools for effective functioning. This included communication tools, accounting tools, issue filing systems and a whole lot of other systems. Initially our apartment complex was setup on another apartment management software, but we had serious issues in maintaining accounting information.
Over time, this became really cumbersome as multiple accounts were being maintained in excel and other systems. We wanted one system which could handle all the accounting and also circulate information to all members. ApnaComplex had a unique feature in that we found it to be the only apartment management system which supported double entry accounting.
While we are still setting up our accounts, we envisage it now becoming like bank accounts with detailed statements, receipts, transaction history and all sensitive information under one roof. All this seems to come at a very reasonable price making it a really worthy investment. We hope using this tool, the whole management experience would become very professional rivaling corporate setups.”
Thank you Mr. Rajiv and TTAOA for your nice words. We look forward to serve Temple Tree Apartments.
Sobha Althea and Azalea – a premium residential property in Yelahanka, Bangalore has gone live this week on ApnaComplex. The society of this 176 flats + 26 villas complex, has chosen ApnaComplex after a detailed evaluation and comparison with other software.
Writing to us on this occasion, Mr. Kannan, President of Sobha Althea and Azalea Apartment Owners Association has the following to say –
ApnaComplex - Right Choice of every gated community
“We evaluated several options for managing our Association – Sobha Althea and Azalea Apartment Owners Association and zeroed in on Apna Complex.
Some of the key factors that went in favour of Apna Complex were the ease of operating the portal, the quality of thought that has gone into designing the portal, the clarity & level of commitment of the ApnaComplex team in ensuring continuous updation and modernisation of the portal taking into account individual customisation requirements.
The portal is quite comprehensive for managing the day to day running of an Apartment Complex at a reasonable cost. The on-boarding is fast and our experience in setting up the database for our complex was very smooth and easy. We wish Apna Complex all the luck in expanding their base.”
Thank you Mr. Kannan Viswanathan and Mr. N.K. Balasubramanian of SAAAOA for the nice words and we look forward to serve Althea and Azalea complex!
Summer is here and almost every one is facing the heat already. Even traditionally cooler cities like Bangalore are seeing temperatures rise year after year. We have put together a small list of preventive measures that can followed by every one in your society and also some first aid techniques that can applied in case any one becomes a victim of heat related injury.
Preventing Summer Stress
Hot weather triggers a variety of medical emergencies. Even healthy people should take it easy during extremely high temperatures, and those with respiratory and other health problems must be especially careful. The best ways to prevent a sun stress emergency are:
May appear very basic, but first stay out of the sun as much as possible.
Drink extra fluids, but avoid alcoholic beverages. Alcohol can cause dehydration.
Drink before you’re thirsty and drink often.
Wear a hat or cap, keep the neck covered and wear loose fitting clothing. It’s important to wear a hat because it prevents heat load by acting as a barrier from the heat source (normally the sun). Cooling the head and neck may be an effective means of reducing core body temperature in those with heat stress.
If you can, work in the cool hours of the day or evening.
Heat-related Injuries and First Aid Measures
It is important to know that heat-related injuries fall into three major categories:
Heat cramps
Heat exhaustion
Heatstroke
Heat cramps are muscular pains and spasms that occur when the body loses electrolytes during profuse sweating or when inadequate electrolytes are taken into the body. They usually begin in the arms, legs or abdomen, and often precede heat exhaustion.
Treatment for heat cramps is to rest in the shade, get near a fan, spray the person with water and massage the cramp.
Heat exhaustion is a medical emergency. When a person is suffering from heat exhaustion, they will perspire profusely and most likely will be pale.
It is best treated by taking the patient to a cool place, applying cool compresses, elevating the feet and giving the patient fluids.
Heat stroke is the worst heat-related injury. The brain has lost its ability to regulate body temperature. The patient will be hot, reddish and warm to the touch. Their temperature will be markedly high and there will be no perspiration. This is a medical emergency, call Toll Free No 108.
The emergency care of heatstroke is to cool the body as quickly as possible. One of the best methods for cooling the body during a heat emergency is to wrap the patient in cool, wet sheets.
Credits: This article was provided by APMS, Hyderabad.
This article aims at collating and providing information for benefit of ApnaComplex customers and blog readers. While ApnaComplex has taken every care to ensure the information is accurate, we suggest to please use it only as a guidance and not as any professional medical advise. Please consult relevant professionals to take any action based on the guidelines given.
We are blessed with another solid testimonial from a happy customer – Mr. S V Padmanabhan, Hon. President of Dhyanaprastha Township Owners Society. Here is what he has to share about ApnaComplex:
“We started using ApnaComplex portal since mid Feb. 2011 after preliminary trials, especially with the Accounting System packaged with it. This is what makes this portal unique and suitable for our township for senior citizens. It is managed by the owners – all senior citizens. Apart from common services typical of other societies, we offer centralized cooking / catering of food and housekeeping besides car / driver
To keep track of expenses and income, we wanted an online Accounting System that could be accessed and monitored remotely by the Treasurer and any Office Bearer of the Managing Committee. ApnaComplex makes it possible. At any time it is possible to ensure that all transactions are up-to-date. We can generate reports that can help control expenses. Any member can get information on bills raised and payments made. The system is user friendly and does not call for the services of an accountant.
The portal is also rich in other features that can be used by all members. In short, ApnaComplex is very well suited for most housing societies. The license fee is reasonable in the context of the benefits that can be realized by its use. I wish ApnaComplex success in their endeavour to promote their application.”
Thank you Mr. Padmanabhan. We are glad we are of help to make life of senior citizens in your society a little less hassle free.
A great way to begin a New Year. Mr. Tagore, Treasurer of Studio Sycamore Apartments provided us a testimonial that made us happy and proud! Mr. Tagore says:
“Its’ been almost 6 months since we have started using ApnaComplex website for managing our apartment complex. It has brought us great amount of transparency, centralized, efficient way of managing the activities for the complex. ApnaCompelx provides easy to use interface to manage finances, keep track of assets/maintain them, manage committees, meetings, notices and share information in a timely way. I see ApnaComplex support team striving to add features weekly, provide great support with prompt actions on raised questions and most importantly send useful updates weekly to the users for managing activities in an efficient way. For the price, ApnaComplex provides value that is unbeatable!!“
Thank you Mr. Tagore! You made our festival day extra special!
The water treatment industry in India is well established and has been around since the early 1950s with just a few players at that time, several of them subsidiaries of companies known internationally. The market grew over the last 5 decades and today, there are probably close to a few thousand companies(including many small, local companies) as players now in the market. As the industrialization and development of the country progressed, water use too grew rapidly with water being used with utter profligacy depleting ground water and polluting surface water with industrial waste water and enormous quantities of domestic sewage.
As water quality deteriorated, there was a clear opportunity for companies to bring in Reverse Osmosis (RO) technology to cater to the drinking water needs of the country. The standard for drinking water BIS-10500 had also been established in 1991 by the Indian Standards Institution (ISI) now re-named Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS). This standard reflected the deterioration that water quality had undergone, particularly ground water. BIS-10500 has laid down the desirable quality, the acceptable quality and lastly the permissible quality for water used for human consumption if no better, alternate source was available. Such a situation was ideal for the growth of the water treatment industry to cater to the domestic segment using RO for drinking water purification since ground water over much of the country had deteriorated due to over exploitation leading to water with dissolved solids content far in excess of the maximum limit specified by BIS-10500.There was enormous growth in the industry that catered to the water demand of the domestic market.
The economic reforms of 1991 too saw the accelerated GDP growth. In this scenario, the real estate development industry too geared up to meet the pent up demand for housing in the country. If one takes Bangalore as a typical example of this growth, it saw the city of Bangalore growing in size, spreading out, growing in all directions with a virtual forest of apartment complexes and gated communities springing up in almost no time at all! As much of this growth was in areas to which BWSSB was unable to supply Cauvery Water, the residents of such areas had to make do with ground water which was mostly hard water and had excess total dissolved solids. Now, this gave birth to Water Treatment Plants in Apartment Complexes and Housing Societies.
Water treatment plants in Apartment Complexes & Housing Societies
Let us first examine in detail the reasons leading to Water Treatment Plants in Housing Societies.
Hard Water
High hardness in water causes deposit of scales in vessels used for heating water,in hot water geysers and in pressure cookers. Hard water causes poor quality of washing in washing machines, increases consumption of detergent and prevents soap from lathering when having a bath or even when just washing utensils. Hard water prevents dal and rice from cooking, spoils the taste of tea when it is used to make tea and, it also ruins the taste of whiskey when it is used to make a drink!! Hard water fails to quench your thirst when you drink it. Hard water also forms scales in the pipes carrying water and can warrant replacement of all water pipes in the complex after few years which can be a very huge expense.
Obviously, softeners are the answers to such problems. Softeners have therefore become very common in apartment complexes in the form of a large centrally installed system that softens all water used in the premises it is installed in. Some times there is no centralized softener in an apartment complex and one finds that some individual apartments have installed small domestic softeners to soften the water for various uses or to soften the water fed to a small domestic RO unit.
Total Dissolved Solids (TDS)
Total dissolved solids is the total of all the minerals present in a water including the total hardness. A total dissolved solids content of approximately 300 to 500 ppm (or mg/litre) is acceptable and does not need to be treated by an RO unit. However, in most places well waters often have TDS levels as high as 1000 ppm or more.
This is where an RO system comes in as very useful as it can remove 90 to 95% of the TDS and thus provide good tasting water. Using an RO unit would produce treated water with TDS as low as 20 to 30 ppm. However, it is important to note that hard water cannot be directly fed into a RO unit as it forms hardness sacale on the RO Membrane. Thus, Soft water is the best kind of water to feed an RO unit. There are apartment complexes where the residents of a complex have shared the cost of installing a central RO system which is used to supply RO water to all the apartments in the complex
Suspended Impurities
In a majority of the cases, softeners need to protected from the presence of suspended impurities in the feed water. This is done by installing a pressure sand filter and, some times by also installing an additional activated carbon filter which protects the softener from the effects of chlorinated water and organic impurities. Such filtration systems are also a must as a pre-treatment for RO systems.
Thus, essentailly we need water to pass through filternation plats, followed by softener, and then through RO Unit to get potable water.
Swimming pool purification process
In apartments / socieites where Swimming Pools are present, swimming pool purification plants need to be present to take care of the clarity of pool water and need to be used well in advance to ‘turn over’ the entire contents of the pool before swimmers can use it. Pools need water that is clear, have an almost neutral pH and are free from any bacteria. This involves having to dose a variety of chemicals into the pool water daily. This ends up increasing the chemical content of the pool water which then needs to brought down by diluting the pool with fresh water after the pool filter has been backwashed(cleaned). The backwashing process reduces the quantity of pool water and this is made up with fresh water to dilute the concentration of chemicals in the water.
Now comes the question – with every step of water treamtment, there is bound to be waste water getting generated. How much is this quantity and can anything be done about this ‘waste’ water.
Waste Water Generated by each treatment process
In such a scenario, it is absolutely essential to take a good look at the waste water generated by each treatment process which are given below:
Filters: Water lost due to backwash to clean filters is between 10 to 15%. This means that for every 100 litres of filtered water, a filter needs 110 to 115 litres of feed water. This applies to swimming pool filters too.
Softeners: Water lost due to ‘regeneration’ or ‘ recharge’ is as much as 30% if inlet hardness is around 300 to 350 ppm as CaCo3 and increases as the inlet hardness increases. Feed water needed will be 130 litres or more for each 100 litres of soft water or more depending on higher hardness values.
RO plants: Small, domestic units used in individual households are the most wasteful and the waste can be as high as 90% in small units and lower if the RO system is of large capacity and waste in such systems would be around 50 to 30% of feed water.
Need to Reduce Waste Water from the Purification/treatment methods
Hardly any housing society or apartment residents’ association or its plant operating personnel know or bother to monitor the waste water that is created by any of the treatment systems used in an apartment complex. Worse still I have yet to see any plant installed which has a water meter fitted at the inlet that can help to monitor the amount of water treated and wasted during regeneration of softeners, backwash of filters and during normal operations of RO systems which have a steady flow of ‘ reject’ water going to waste during operation. In a majority of the places they do not even have an accurate figure of the total water coming into the property particularly if they have yielding bore wells. As most parts of Bangalore now have dry bore wells and get water in tankers, some vague figure based on the number of tankers supplied is available. Tanker volumes are notoriously unreliable and they seldom supply what they claim as the tanker capacity.
Need to have better operations and maintenance of WTPs
I have seen numerous WTPs (filters,softeners, RO plants & swimming pool purifica-tion).Most of them ( close to 95%) are badly operated or not operated. Maintenance is seldom done as per schedule(actually, I have yet to see a maintenance schedule!). This is a wasteful practice and results in the unnecessary waste of water that could otherwise have been used in some apartments.
Proper treatment of waste water
Regeneration/reject waste and filtration waste waters in any property usually goes as a mixture clandestinely to storm water drains. The quality of this waste water is such that pollution control laws do not permit such disposal and it would normally have to be sent to the STP for treatment, as, normally STP treated water is usually re-cycled and not (can not be) discharged.
Bleak future
If this is the state of affairs with WTPs, I question the need to even install such systems as they do not meet the objective of producing treated water. The main point that needs to be kept in mind is that the increasing scarcity of fresh water will make the use of WTPs unviable as there will not be enough fresh water (from bore wells/tankers) for both use and regeneration/re-charge of WTPs. I also predict that swimming pools will soon become unviable for swimming pool use, but could definitely be used as a storage whenever a sizeable volume of water becomes available.
About the author Mr. S.S. Ranganathan, author of this guest post, is a retired senior executive of Ion Exchange and currently a freelance Water Management Consultant based in Bangalore. His blog at “India Water Portal” explains the work he does in detail. He can be reached at +91-93437-34229.
This article aims at providing information for benefit of ApnaComplex customers and blog readers. The thoughts and opinions expressed here are solely of Mr. S. S. Ranganathan and NOT of ApnaComplex or its representatives. We suggest to post your queries or comments below and Mr. Rangathan can answer them at his convenience.
At present, ApnaComplex supports following registers 
Mr. S.S. Ranganathan, author of this guest post, is a retired senior executive of Ion Exchange and currently a freelance Water Management Consultant based in Bangalore. His blog at “