Dues
The short answer: name the three totals and stop. What was charged, what came in, and what the bank shows. Until those three agree, do not ask residents to pay from whichever file happens to be open.
This is the week the volunteer treasurer actually has. The annual meeting can wait. A resident who pays the wrong number spends the next month arguing, and the next treasurer inherits a gap nobody wrote down.
Where the three files part
The spreadsheet is usually last year's roll plus this period's charge, edited by whoever had the file open. The old portal is whatever that system posted, including prepayments sitting on the wrong period. The email thread is a screenshot of a door that paid by check at the meeting and never made it into either file.
On the sample, October is billed at $312 a door. That is a named gap, not a mystery total. The failure is when those three numbers live in three files and nobody can say which one the board is using.
Write the disagreement down before you fix it. Which file, which door, which amount. A named gap is work. A confident guess that almost ties is how the next handover becomes a reconstruction from bank statements.
- Charged this period: $1,872 (six doors at $312)
- Came in: $1,372 - the bank deposit for the period is the same $1,372
- Still open: $500 - Lot 2 owes $312, Lot 6 owes $188
- Already tied: four doors show $0
Tie the doors, then invite residents to pay
Bring the file you already have. The software proposes where each row goes. A person approves it. Each door then shows tied or balance open on the same books the bank will be checked against. Residents are invited to pay only after the board's total matches.
We do not keep the books as a service. We keep the record your CPA works from. A CPA can work with a named gap. They cannot work with three totals that almost agree. This page is general information, not accounting advice.
General information, not legal advice. Your state and your governing documents differ.