The first 90 days as a BC strata council treasurer are the most consequential. You’re inheriting a financial picture that was put together by other people, on assumptions you don’t yet know, in a regulatory environment that nobody briefed you on. The decisions you make in this period — what to ask about, what to leave alone, what to delegate to the PM and what to keep — set the tone for the rest of your council year.

This is the version we wish every incoming BC treasurer had. It assumes you’re stepping into the role at the start of a calendar fiscal year (the most common pattern). Slide the dates if your fiscal year is different.

Week 1 — Get the documents

The single best thing you can do in week one is collect documents. Until you have them, every conversation is approximate.

Request from the PM:

• The last two years of monthly financial statements.
• The current bank statements for the operating and contingency reserve fund (CRF) accounts.
• The most recent annual budget and the year-to-date variance.
• The current depreciation report (if your strata has one).
• The current insurance policy declarations page.
• The current strata bylaws.
• The current owner list and the strata’s records of unit entitlement.
• The minutes from the last 12 months of council meetings.
• Signing authority documentation — who is currently authorised to sign cheques and bind contracts.

Read in this order: The bylaws first, the depreciation report’s executive summary second, the most recent financial statement third. You can come back to everything else over the following weeks.

The bylaws are the operating system your strata runs on. The depreciation report tells you what’s coming financially. The financial statement tells you where you are now. In that order.

Week 2 — Understand the books

Most BC stratas have their bookkeeping done by the PM, which means the PM is the one who actually knows where the money is. Week two is for getting you to know where the money is.

Schedule a 60-minute call or meeting with the PM’s accountant or bookkeeping lead. Bring the financial statements. Ask:

• Walk me through how income is recognised — strata fees, late charges, contingency contributions.
• Walk me through how expenses are categorised. What’s operating vs. CRF? What’s been accrued vs. paid?
• Show me the year-to-date variance. Where are we tracking ahead of budget? Where are we tracking behind?
• Show me the CRF activity for the year. What’s gone in, what’s come out, what’s the current balance?
• How are special levies (if any) being collected and tracked?
• Are there any outstanding owner accounts that have aged past 60 days?

This is not the meeting where you make changes. This is the meeting where you build a mental model of how money moves through the strata. By the end of it, you should be able to take a phone call from an owner asking “why are my strata fees what they are” and give a credible answer in under a minute.

Week 3 — Sign on bank accounts and contracts

If you’re a new signing authority, this is the slowest administrative item of the first 90 days. The bank will need:

• A council resolution authorising you as a signatory.
• Your government ID.
• An in-person visit, in most cases.
• Sometimes a removal of the prior signatory in the same visit.

Schedule this in week three because it routinely takes two to four weeks to fully take effect, and you don’t want to be unable to sign a cheque in week six because the bank lost your paperwork.

While you’re at it, find out who else has signing authority on the strata’s accounts. Some stratas have outdated signing authorities from former council members who haven’t been removed. Update.

Weeks 4–6 — Build the calendar

Most incoming treasurers underestimate how much of the job is calendar management. By week four, you should have a working calendar of:

• The monthly council meeting cadence.
• The annual general meeting date and the notice deadlines around it.
• Every recurring inspection deadline (fire alarm, sprinkler, emergency lighting, backflow, etc. — our council year calendar article lists the full set).
• The insurance renewal date and the 90-day-before-renewal start of the broker conversation.
• The depreciation report cycle date (5 years from the date of the current report).
• The contract renewal dates for major service providers (PM, landscaping, snow, accountant, auditor).
• The fiscal year-end and the audit / review engagement timing.

A single shared spreadsheet, updated by the PM and visible to council, is enough. The discipline of having the calendar — and looking at it before every council meeting — is what separates a treasurer who hits deadlines from one who chases them.

Weeks 6–8 — Understand the depreciation report

If your strata has a current depreciation report (post-2020), this is the week to actually read it. Not just the executive summary — the asset register, the CRF scenarios, the methodology section.

Our reading a depreciation report article walks through the eight numbers that matter most. Write them down. Bring them to the next council meeting.

If your strata is missing a current report and the July 2026 deadline applies to you, this is also the week to escalate that to council as a top-priority item. The 2026 deadline guide is the deep version; our matching service is the fastest path to qualified quotes.

Weeks 8–10 — Meet the recurring vendors

Schedule short calls or coffees with:

• The strata’s accountant (or auditor, if separate).
• The strata’s insurance broker.
• The senior PM at the property management firm (not just your day-to-day contact).
• The depreciation-report provider, if relevant.

These are getting-to-know-you conversations. Ask each of them what they wish council understood better about their part of the strata’s operation. Take notes.

A treasurer who has direct relationships with the strata’s professional service providers is a much more effective treasurer than one who only knows the PM. The relationships take half an hour each and pay back for years.

Weeks 10–13 — Plan the AGM (or the next budget cycle)

By weeks 10–13 you should be approaching either the AGM (for stratas with calendar fiscal year) or the start of the next budget-planning cycle.

If the AGM is coming:

• Confirm the date, venue, and notice timing.
• Help draft the budget that will be presented for owner vote. Run it past the accountant for variance and reasonableness.
• Confirm the CRF contribution recommendation. If your depreciation report recommends a higher contribution than the current rate, you’ll be presenting the case for the increase.
• Confirm the council’s position on any standing resolutions (special levies, bylaw amendments, multi-year service contracts).

If the budget cycle is starting:

• Begin reviewing the recurring service contracts that are up for renewal.
• Begin the conversation with the PM about anticipated cost changes for the coming year.
• Identify the capital projects from the depreciation report that fall in the next 1–3 years and what they’d cost in current dollars.

The treasurer’s standing items

A few responsibilities that recur throughout the year and are easy to lose track of unless they’re scheduled:

• Monthly bank reconciliation review. You don’t have to do the reconciliation, but you should be reviewing it monthly.
• Quarterly variance review. Year-to-date budget vs. actuals, with a written explanation of any line item more than 10% off-budget.
• CRF activity tracking. Every CRF deposit and withdrawal, with the corresponding capital project or contribution.
• Owner account aging. Owners more than 60 days late on strata fees become a real legal-and-collection question.
• Insurance claim tracking. Any open claim, its status, the strata’s deductible exposure, the PM’s response timeline.

Most of these can be standing agenda items at the monthly council meeting. Build them in.

What not to do in the first 90 days

A few common new-treasurer mistakes worth flagging.

• Don’t fire the PM in week three. Even if the PM is genuinely bad, you don’t yet have the documentation, the alternative quotes, or the council alignment to do it cleanly. Take notes; revisit in month six.
• Don’t unilaterally change the CRF investment strategy. This is usually a council decision and sometimes an owner-vote question. Understand the current strategy before proposing changes.
• Don’t promise owners things you haven’t run through council. If an owner emails you asking when the leak in their unit will be fixed, your role is to acknowledge and route to the PM — not to commit a timeline.
• Don’t try to learn the bylaws via the PM. Read them yourself. PMs sometimes get them wrong, and a treasurer who can quote SPA s. 72 in council meetings is much more effective than one who can’t.

The honest take

The first 90 days as a BC strata treasurer are mostly about absorbing information and building relationships. Substantive decisions can wait. Your value to council over the rest of the year — and to the next treasurer you’ll eventually hand over to — is built almost entirely on the documents you collect, the conversations you schedule, and the calendar you build in this period.

If you want a single email at the start of each month flagging what’s about to be operative for your council, the StrataNotes brief is the lightest version. Our council year calendar covers the recurring rhythm; our coverage pages on the 2026 deadline, fire safety, and backflow are deeper reads on the specific items that hit treasurers hardest in their first year.