How to check whether your condominium administration is really digital

Nearly every condominium administration now describes itself as digital. The word has stopped distinguishing anything, because it covers both those running a genuine platform and those who merely swapped registered post for email. This guide gives you a way to tell which one applies to your building — seven questions you can answer in ten minutes, with no technical knowledge and without depending on the goodwill of whoever administers it.

Digital is not the same as having email

The most common confusion is mistaking electronic correspondence for digital administration. Sending the notice of meeting by email, attaching the accounts as a PDF and having a website with a contact form is electronic correspondence. It replaced paper, which is good, but it changed nothing fundamental: the information still exists only on the side of whoever administers, and the owner still has to ask for it.

The difference lies in who holds the information, and when. In a digital administration, the building's data is permanently available on the owner's side, up to date, without an intermediary. There is no need to request a statement, no need to wait for a reply, no need to trust that whoever sent it sent everything. The information is there — and whoever administers knows it is there, which by itself changes the discipline with which it is kept.

That is the useful dividing line. Everything else — the attractive app, the colourful dashboard, the modern name — is secondary to a single question: is my building's information on my side, or still on the side of whoever administers it?

Seven questions to put to your administration

Each of these has a binary, verifiable answer. Do not ask whether the administration is digital. Ask this:

Four or more negative answers indicate an administration that is digital in its language and analogue in its operation. That does not necessarily make it a bad administration — it may well be rigorous and competent — but it is imposing on you a dependency that no longer has any technical justification or meaningful cost.

What a platform can actually measure

Part of this does not depend on opinion. Companies that supply condominium management software can measure, across their own installed base, what each administration genuinely uses. And the indicators they choose to measure reveal what separates real use from decorative use.

It is worth translating these into what they mean on your side. Banking integration means your payment reaches the right account without anyone typing it in — fewer misallocations and fewer disputes over fees recorded as unpaid. Certified email means proof of receipt for the notice of meeting, which is exactly what underpins the validity of the resolutions passed at that meeting; without that proof, a resolution is more exposed to challenge. Batch entry means a thirty-line invoice is not copied out by hand thirty times.

None of the three is a showcase feature. They are all points where, in practice, a condominium loses money and legal certainty.

Warning signs

What changes in practice

The advantage of a digital administration that actually works is not convenience. It is the shortening of the interval between something happening and the owner being able to verify it. Under analogue management that interval is a year — what happened in February is discussed at the following year's meeting, when nobody remembers the context and nothing can be corrected. Under digital management it is days.

That shortening has concrete consequences. A misallocated expense is caught while it is still correctable. An overdue fee becomes visible before it turns into a debt requiring legal enforcement. Works that ran over budget are discussed while there is still room to renegotiate. And on the administration's side, knowing the accounts are permanently visible imposes a rigour that an annual presentation does not.

For buildings with absentee or foreign owners the effect is greater still, because the alternative is not delayed verification — it is no verification at all. Someone living abroad does not attend meetings in person and does not drop by the office. Without permanent access, that owner approves accounts they have never read.

Where Condoarade stands on this

The Condoarade Digital Administration was built around the seven questions above: a platform with permanent access for every owner, general meetings by video-conference under Article 1.º-A of Decree-Law 268/94, notices with proof of receipt, communication in Portuguese and English, and the common reserve fund held in a separate account with its own statement in the annual accounts.

In July 2026, Condoarade received the Gecond Business Digital Excellence Seal 2026. It is worth being clear about what that is and is not: the distinction is awarded by Improxy, the company that develops the Gecond software we use, based on measured use of its tools throughout 2025 — the three indicators described above. It is not an independent certification, nor an audit of service quality. It is the platform provider measuring the use we make of it. It is worth exactly that, and we mention it because the criteria are public and verifiable, not because it is a general award of merit.