Management Company Guide
Stratapilot · Help Centre Last updated: July 2026
Overview
A management company (strata management firm) uses Stratapilot to run a whole portfolio of schemes from one account: onboard schemes in bulk, price and invoice each scheme's management fee, manage staff access across schemes, apply your own branding, and give your team an AI assistant that works across every managed scheme.
This guide covers the firm-facing (organization) features. Everything a scheme's own committee sees is documented in the other guides — this one is for the people running the firm.
Who is this for? Organization owners and admins. Regular staff can be given access to individual schemes without seeing firm-wide billing or settings.
Registering Your Management Company
New firms register from the Register your management company page (/org/register).
- Enter your company name, choose a URL slug, and provide the owner's details.
- Pay the one-off AU $49 registration fee.
- The $49 is added to your organization as account credit — it is not a sunk cost. It is automatically spent down against your first management-fee usage (and can fund a one-month AI trial — see AI Assistant Plan).
Once registered, the owner lands on the firm portal with the management navigation: Portfolio, AI Assistant, Staff, Onboard schemes, Billing, Audit log, Branding.
Portfolio
Portfolio is your cross-scheme home. It lists every scheme your firm manages with a quick triage view so you can see what needs attention across the whole book at a glance.
- Search the list to jump to a scheme.
- The triage panel groups schemes by what needs action; the all-clear list (schemes with nothing outstanding) is expanded by default so you can confirm coverage.
Onboarding Schemes
Bring schemes into your portfolio in bulk from the Onboard schemes page
(/org/onboarding).
-
Prepare a CSV with a header row containing name, address and state columns (any order).
-
Click Download example CSV to get a correctly-formatted starter file with sample rows, then replace the rows with your schemes.
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Upload the CSV. A dry-run preview validates every row first and shows how many schemes will be created, how many are duplicates, and any errors.
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Confirm the import. Onboarding only creates the schemes under your firm — each scheme's committee is invited afterwards through the normal scheme invite flow.
The import is idempotent: a row whose (name, address) already exists in your organization is skipped, so re-running a partially-failed import never creates duplicates. Unknown state codes and blank required fields are reported as errors.
Each onboarded scheme records the date it joined your portfolio, which is used to prorate its first invoice (see First-invoice proration).
Billing
The Billing page (/org/billing) is where you set how schemes are priced, see your
live usage, and issue invoices. Only organization owners and admins can view it.
At the top, the usage summary shows Schemes, Lots, and Current charge for the period, plus Account credit and Net payable when you hold credit.
Rate card (default pricing)
The Pricing card sets your firm-wide rate card. Every managed scheme is charged:
charge = clamp(per-lot rate × lots, per-scheme floor, per-scheme ceiling)
| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Per-scheme floor ($) | Minimum fee per scheme, regardless of lot count |
| Per-lot rate ($) | Charge per lot |
| Per-scheme ceiling ($, optional) | Cap per scheme; leave blank for no cap |
| Cycle | Monthly or Annual — drives when invoices are raised |
| Payment | Invoice or Card |
All amounts are GST-exclusive; 10% GST is added on invoices. When you change the rate card, each affected scheme's finance contacts are emailed the new pricing. Schemes on a per-scheme agreed quote are unaffected by rate-card changes.
Per-scheme pricing (agreed quotes)
Some schemes come across from another platform with an existing agreement, or negotiate a bespoke fee. The Per-scheme pricing card lets you override the rate card per scheme:
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Agreed fee ($) | The negotiated fee, GST-exclusive, per that scheme's billing period |
| Billing period | Fortnightly, Monthly, 3 months, 4 months, or Annual — per scheme |
| Extra service | An optional recurring charge for extra/ad-hoc services, with a note |
| Quote | Upload the quote or fee agreement the price came from |
A scheme with an agreed fee is invoiced at that amount instead of the rate card.
Price changes must be confirmed by the scheme
To prevent hidden updates, a change to an existing scheme's agreed price does not take effect immediately:
- You save the new fee / period / extra-service charge on the Billing page.
- It is stored as a pending proposal — the scheme keeps being charged its current, confirmed price. The Billing table shows a "Change awaiting scheme confirmation" badge.
- The scheme's treasurer or admin sees the proposal in their Settings → Management fees and Confirms (or rejects) it.
- Only on confirmation does the new price become active and start being invoiced.
The first agreement you set for a scheme activates immediately (there is no prior price to hide).
First-invoice proration
When a scheme is onboarded partway through a billing period, its first invoice is prorated for the fraction of the period it was actually managed. A scheme onboarded on the 16th of a month is billed roughly half that month, shown as a "Proration — onboarded partway through this period" line. Subsequent invoices are charged in full.
Account credit
The $49 registration credit (and any other credit) is spent down against your usage. The usage summary shows the credit balance and the net payable after credit is applied for the cycle.
Invoicing Schemes
The Invoicing schemes section of the Billing page turns pricing into real tax invoices and tracks who has paid.
Your payment details
Before you can issue invoices, fill in Your payment details (payee name, ABN, EFT account name/BSB/account number, address). These appear on every invoice so schemes know where to remit the management fee. Payee name and EFT bank details are required.
Generating and issuing invoices
- Click Generate this cycle to create draft invoices for every managed scheme for the current billing period, priced from the rate card or each scheme's agreed quote (plus any extra-service line, plus proration where applicable). GST is added on top.
- Review a draft, then Issue it. Issuing assigns an invoice number and payment reference, sets a 14-day due date, emails the scheme's finance contacts a PDF tax invoice, and locks the invoice (issued invoices are immutable — Void, never edit).
Recording payments
- Record a payment manually against an issued invoice; it moves to Part-paid or Paid automatically.
- Or Reconcile bank CSV: upload a bank statement and Stratapilot auto-records each credit whose description contains a known invoice payment reference, capped at the outstanding balance. Re-uploading the same statement is safe — a bank line is never applied twice.
Receivables
The receivables view summarises outstanding and overdue balances with aging buckets (0–30, 31–60, 60+ days). Invoice history shows prior cycles' totals.
AI Assistant Plan
Your firm's staff get an AI Assistant (/org/assistant) that works across your
managed schemes. Access is governed by an organization AI entitlement with three
states: None, Trial, and Active.
| Option | What it does |
|---|---|
| Activate 1-month trial | Spends the $49 account credit to start a one-month AI trial with generous limits. Activate-when-ready; you can't double-activate while a trial or plan is already running or without enough credit. |
| Unlimited plan ($199/month) | A recurring subscription that keeps the entitlement Active while current, with a fair-use daily cap. Managed through the usual card checkout; the plan status shows on the Billing and Assistant pages. |
For a managed scheme, the firm's entitlement is checked first: an active paid plan gives unlimited use (subject to fair-use), an active trial gives generous limits, and otherwise the scheme falls back to its own subscription. Self-managed schemes are unchanged.
Staff and Seats
The Staff page (/org/staff) manages who at your firm can access which schemes.
- Invite staff to your organization and assign them to specific schemes.
- Organization roles (owner / admin) control who can see firm-wide billing and settings.
- Offboarding a staff member removes their access across the schemes they were assigned to.
Branding (White-label)
The Branding page (/org/branding) applies your firm's identity across the schemes
you manage — upload your logo (light, dark, favicon variants) and set brand colours so
the portal your clients see reflects your company, not Stratapilot's default theme.
Audit Log
The Audit log page (/org/audit) records firm-level actions — pricing changes,
scheme imports, invoice issue/void/payment events, staff changes — with the actor and
timestamp, so you have an accountable history of who did what.
Data Export
From the Billing page, Download data export (JSON) produces a portable copy of your organization's management data — organization, billing, staff, managed schemes, assignments, usage, and audit log — so your data is never locked in.
What the Scheme Sees
Each managed scheme sees its own pricing and invoices under Settings → Management fees (visible to the scheme's treasurer and admin). That section shows the agreed fee and billing period, any extra-service charge, the estimated total including GST, where to pay, the list of invoices with status, and — when you propose a price change — a Confirm / Reject prompt. See the Scheme Settings guide for the scheme-side view.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does changing the rate card change schemes on an agreed quote? No. Schemes with a per-scheme agreed fee are priced by their agreement and are unaffected by rate-card changes.
Why hasn't my new price taken effect? A change to an existing scheme's price is a proposal until the scheme's treasurer or admin confirms it in their settings. This prevents hidden fee increases. The first price you set for a scheme takes effect immediately.
Why is the first invoice smaller than expected? Schemes onboarded partway through a period are prorated for their first invoice, then billed in full afterwards.
Can I bill each scheme on its own period (e.g. fortnightly)? You can record each scheme's agreed billing period and it is shown to the scheme and used in its estimate. Raising invoices automatically on each scheme's own cadence (rather than your firm's cycle) is on the roadmap.
What happens to the $49 registration fee? It becomes account credit that offsets your first management-fee usage, or can fund a one-month AI trial.
Disclaimer: Information in this Help Centre documents Stratapilot platform behaviour and does not constitute legal, financial, or strata management advice.