CMMS for condos: what Ontario condo corporations actually need

Most maintenance software is built for factories and fleets. Condo corporations are a different animal: you are not just fixing equipment, you are running a regulated not-for-profit with owners, a reserve fund, and statutory deadlines under Ontario's Condominium Act, 1998. A CMMS that only tracks work orders will leave half the job undone. Here is what actually matters when you evaluate one.

1. Day-to-day maintenance, but tied to units and common elements

The basics still apply — you need fast intake, clear assignment, and a record of what was done. The difference for a condo is where the work happened: a unit, a common element, or shared mechanical (boiler, elevator, garage). Good software lets a resident report an issue, routes it to the right person, and keeps the history attached to the asset and the location so you can answer “when was the garage drain last serviced?” in seconds.

Look for a public request page residents can use without an app or login, photo capture, and a status the requester can follow. That single feature removes most of the phone calls a property manager fields in a week.

2. Recurring services and their certificates

A condo is a stack of recurring obligations: fire safety inspections, fire alarm monitoring, sprinkler and backflow testing, elevator maintenance (TSSA), pest control, HVAC, and generator service. These are subcontracted, so they belong in contract tracking — with a service cadence and, critically, a certificate expiry you get reminded about before it lapses. A fire inspection certificate that quietly expires is the kind of thing that turns up in a status certificate at the worst possible moment.

3. The reserve fund and reserve fund study

Under the Act, a corporation must keep a reserve fund and commission a reserve fund study — a Class 1 within the first year, then updates every three years — with a funding plan projected over at least 30 years. Owners must be notified of the proposed future-funding plan within 15 days of the board adopting it. Software won't write the engineering study, but it should track the cycle: the study class and date, the next-due date, and the reserve balance against your operating budget, with a nudge when a study is coming due.

4. Statutory deadlines you can't miss

• Status certificates (s.76): 10 days to deliver, fee capped at $100, and they bundle live data — budget, reserve status, common-expense arrears for the unit, insurance, and any litigation.
• Information certificates: the PIC twice a year (within 60 days of the end of Q1 and Q3), an ICU within 30 days of a key change, and a NOIC within 30 days of a new owner.
• AGM: within six months of fiscal year-end, with a two-stage notice (a preliminary notice 20 days before the notice, which is itself at least 15 days out).

The value of a system here isn't generating the legal document — it's never being surprised by a date. A reminder surface that says “PIC due in 21 days” or “records request response due” is worth more than another binder.

5. Owners, the register, and reporting

Notices run off an accurate record of owners and mortgagees, including who has consented to electronic delivery. And boards increasingly expect a portal where owners — and their accountants — can pull statements and documents without emailing the manager. If your CMMS already does owner reporting, the condo layer should build on it rather than live in a separate tool.

What to take away

The right tool for a condo corporation is a maintenance system that also understands compliance: recurring services with certificate tracking, reserve-fund and study cadence, and the statutory clocks surfaced where you'll see them. If you're evaluating options, start with how a product handles those three things — the work-order basics are table stakes.

Arlo is built for exactly this mix of maintenance and property operations. See the full feature set or how pricing works.