How do we move off spreadsheets and group chats?
Quick answer
Move deadline-driven information first — compliance dates, open maintenance and current insurance — then bring documents across progressively. You don't need a complete migration before the committee starts using the portal day to day.
Key takeaways
- Prioritise deadline-driven records first: insurance, compliance dates, open jobs
- Historical documents can migrate progressively, not all at once
- The habit shift takes longer than the mechanical migration — allow a meeting cycle or two
Almost every committee we hear from is running some combination of a shared drive, a group chat and one volunteer's personal email as the de facto record system. It works, until that volunteer moves house or the group chat's history disappears into an app update.
Why the switch is worth it
The core problem with spreadsheets and chat threads isn't that they're free — it's that the information is scattered by person rather than organised by building. When a secretary or treasurer steps down, whatever lived in their head or their inbox often goes with them. A structured record that belongs to the building survives every committee turnover.
What to prioritise
- Anything with a hard deadline: insurance renewal dates, essential services checks, contractor insurance expiries
- Open items: maintenance jobs waiting on quotes or approval, disputes in progress
- Foundational documents: by-laws, the strata plan, recent AGM minutes
- Contact details for your committee, manager and regular contractors
What can wait
Ten years of old invoices, superseded versions of documents, and historical email threads don't need to move on day one. If they matter later, they can be added when someone has time, without blocking the committee from using the current system now.
Handling the group chat problem
Group chats are genuinely useful for quick coordination, but they're a poor place for decisions because there's no clean record of what was actually agreed. Committee Hub is built to solve exactly this — a private thread the committee can use for discussion, with the decision attached to the discussion that produced it, rather than buried forty messages up.
A realistic timeline
Most committees find the mechanical part of moving core documents and open items takes an hour or two. The bigger shift is habit — training everyone to make decisions and store documents in one place instead of six. That typically settles within a meeting cycle or two, especially once people notice they stop being asked "does anyone have that PDF?"
Common follow-up questions
Related questions
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