Housing-cooperative software: unit register, utilities, members’ portal, resolutions
A cooperative board does not buy “an IT system”. It buys one truth about the unit, the advance, the repair fund and the ticket. Housing-cooperative software instead of three spreadsheets, a caretaker’s notebook and the president’s inbox.
A housing-cooperative board does not buy “an IT system”. It buys one truth about the unit, the person, the advance and the work order. Housing-cooperative software exists so that operating advances, the repair fund and the question from the floor — what does this stairwell actually cost — are answered from the same register. When that truth lives in three spreadsheets, two paper files and the secretary’s inbox, an 80-zloty dispute becomes a resolution, an appeal and a lawyer’s invoice.
This article is written for people who sign resolutions, not for a software vendor. We do not promise to replace statutory accounting over a weekend. GESOFT builds a custom portal, register and field app when a packaged product cannot hold your model (cooperative rights next to separated ownership, commercial units, parking, several estates, your own by-laws). Accounting stays where it is already compliant. The cooperative system runs operations, communication and documents that Excel cannot audit.
Poland is not “a dozen blocks and a registration book”. Statistics Poland (GUS) in “Housing economy in 2024”, published 16 September 2025, reported almost 16.0 million dwellings at the end of 2024 — 1.2% more than a year earlier. The stock grew by 186.5 thousand units. Usable floor area reached 1,206.8 million m², there were 61.2 million rooms, and the average dwelling was 75.6 m². 10.8 million dwellings stood in cities. That is the backdrop against which your cooperative bills concrete stairwells, not “the property market in general”.
The same GUS release splits towns and countryside: urban stock rose by 138.9 thousand dwellings (1.3%), rural stock by 47.6 thousand (0.9%). Cities held 10.8 million dwellings on 704.2 million m² with 37.9 million rooms; rural areas 5.1 million dwellings on 502.6 million m² with 23.2 million rooms. A housing cooperative usually sits in multi-family urban fabric and post-war estates. There a unit register is not an address list. It is a register of rights (tenant-cooperative, owner-cooperative, separated ownership), shares in common property, meters and a debtor’s history. GUS counts millions. You count every metre of corridor, because that metre drives the advance.
How many cooperatives — and why three figures do not contradict each other
The usual board-versus-vendor mistake is “Poland has X cooperatives, so we are typical”. X depends on the register. Michał Sobczak in Sejm BAS Studies no. 4/76 2023 reported that the National Court Register (KRS) listed 4,014 housing cooperatives on 13 September 2023. That is a court-register stock, not a census of active boards with a full staff. KRS still holds entities in liquidation, dormant entities and entities that have not billed a stock for years. Quoting KRS as “how many cooperatives operate” mixes a court file with housing statistics.
Sobczak — using GUS, not KRS — also gives a second measure: dwellings in the cooperative stock fell from 3.4 million in 2005 to under 2 million in 2020, and cooperatives historically organised about 13% of the housing stock. That is not a contradiction of 4,014. It is two sets: legal persons on the register versus units GUS classifies as cooperative stock. The drop in units is largely separation of ownership and conversions, not estates vanishing from the map. The cooperative still manages a stairwell where some flats are already separated ownership and some remain cooperative rights. A housing-cooperative programme that only knows “owner / tenant” will collide with the Housing Cooperatives Act in the first month.
Commercial KRS extracts give a third number. COIG’s list dated 26 January 2026 advertises 3,444 housing cooperatives (2,885 with a phone, 1,868 with e-mail). That is a commercial register extract sold as a contact database, not a GUS census and not a study of activity. The gap between 4,014 (KRS, September 2023) and 3,444 (COIG, January 2026) does not mean “570 cooperatives disappeared in two years”. It means another date, another filter and another purpose. A board planning an IT budget should not decide from a price list for addresses.
Secondary websites also write of about 2,950 “active” cooperatives at the end of 2024 “according to GUS”. An example is marinaostroda.pl. Treat those texts as secondary compilations, not as a GUS table we opened in the Local Data Bank or in the XLSX annexes to the 2024 housing release. If you need a count of active units for a resolution, go to GUS or to your own KRS extract. Do not cite a blog as an office. For a software project the number that matters is still yours: units, buildings, meters and roles.
Cooperative, community, manager — three models, one spreadsheet, three failures
The Act of 15 December 2000 on housing cooperatives and the Cooperative Law describe a different legal person from a homeowners’ community under the Act on ownership of premises. A cooperative has members, by-laws, a general meeting (or a meeting of delegates where the statute and the act allow), a supervisory board and a management board. A member may hold a tenant-cooperative right, an owner-cooperative right or separated ownership. The cooperative may also manage property that is no longer a “pure” SM stock. A community is the totality of owners. A manager is a contractor. Housing-cooperative software is not the same product as software for a homeowners’ community or software for a property manager, even if all three bill water.
On one 1970s estate you will meet tenant-cooperative rights, owner-cooperative rights, separated flats in a community the cooperative manages, ground-floor commercial units, parking, storage and antennas on the roof. Accounts must distinguish them: different title, different assessment base, different voting circle. A spreadsheet whose “owner” column means everything produces wrong demands and wrong eligible-voter lists. That is not a UI problem. It is the problem that explodes at the general meeting when someone challenges the quorum.
- Cooperative: members, shares, cooperative rights, organ resolutions, own funds and a repair fund under the statute and the act.
- Community: shares in common property, advances on management costs, a meeting — not “cooperative membership”.
- Manager: a contract, reports for owners, SLAs — not a cooperative organ.
- SM + community on one stairwell: two person registers, two resolution tracks, one physical building.
- Commercial units and leases: rate, VAT, KSeF — a different path from residential operating advances.
GESOFT does not pretend one template will run these three regimes “out of the box”. Packaged products (Weles3, Mieszczanin, System Lokale by MMSoft) exist so that a typical register and assessments can start without a software project. A custom cooperative system makes sense when you have a process SaaS will not take: your own voting, a portal under the cooperative’s domain, Android crews on the roof, an integration the vendor will not open, or an SM/community split deeper than two tabs. Diagnose first. Buy or build second. Not the other way around.
What the acts actually require — without article numbers from memory
We do not recite article numbers we have not checked line by line in the Journal of Laws. The frame is clear enough for a systems decision. The Housing Cooperatives Act and the Cooperative Law require the cooperative to know its members, titles to units, to settle operating and utility costs, to collect and account for a repair fund, to convene organs and to document resolutions. The statute and internal rules say how you allocate cost, who votes and how you call a meeting. Software does not replace the statute. Software must not lie relative to the statute.
The duties that hurt operationally are prosaic. The list of members and eligible persons must print as of today, not “as of three moves ago”. Advances and utilities must have a path for a reading, a correction and a demand. The repair fund must show inflows, spend and balances per building or per property — as you resolved, not as a sheet prefers. Resolution files: text, date, result, annexes, attendance. When that lives in the president’s mailbox, every audit and every court dispute starts with a hunt for a PDF.
Then come duties that are not “cooperative-specific” but general. GDPR — members’ data, PESEL numbers, unit numbers, balances, leak photos from inside a flat. KSeF — invoices the cooperative issues as a taxpayer (commercial leases, recharges, services). e-Deliveries — the cooperative as an entity in the KRS entrepreneurs’ register. None of these duties names a software brand. Each of them names a process Excel cannot audit.
Where Excel breaks and what it actually costs
A typical mid-size cooperative has several buildings, hundreds of units, water and heat meters, seasonal readings, funds, parking and a queue of “it’s leaking on the third floor”. Finance holds the ledger. Administration holds a surface spreadsheet. The caretaker holds a notebook. The president has one more file “for the meeting”. After a year nobody can say whether operating advances on stairwell A cover stairwell A, or whether stairwell B is subsidising it. That is not “a lack of digitalisation”. It is the lack of one event register.
The cost of an Excel error does not look like a licence invoice. It looks like hours that eat a post. A demand to the wrong account. A double charge after a change of owner. Utilities billed on last year’s reading because the new one sat in mail. A vote whose list still contains the person who sold in March. A stairwell job booked “generally”, not against that building’s repair fund. Each of those affairs ends in a duty desk, a letter and — if the member is determined — legal cost. The board sees “atmosphere”. Administration sees overtime. The system should cut overtime, not “deliver digital transformation”.
- Wrong area or wrong share — an advance calculated for a year or more from a wrong denominator.
- A change of owner or member copied in one file, not the other: demands go to someone who no longer lives there.
- Meter readings in mail, SMS and a notebook: utility billing on stale numbers, manual corrections, complaints on the landing.
- No correction history: “who changed the rate in June” cannot be reconstructed for the board.
- A fault report taken on the duty phone dies when the caretaker is on the roof.
- An eligible-voter list built from “yesterday’s sheet” — a defective resolution risk.
- General-meeting papers in one person’s inbox: illness, leave, the law firm waits.
Count conservatively, without marketing multipliers. An administration post costs the employer on the order of tens of thousands of zloty a month (city, seniority and components vary — we do not quote a single “GUS average for SM” here, because we have not verified one for this text). If two people lose the equivalent of one full-time week a month to reconciling files, correcting utilities and hunting letters, that cost eats a SaaS licence or the instalment on your own portal. Add a lawyer’s letter after one defective resolution, interest and cost on a bad recovery, and the trust you will not find in the ledger. Excel is cheap to buy. It is expensive to keep true.
- List how many files are “the source of truth” about a unit (Excel, FK, a folder, mail, the caretaker’s book).
- Pick the last three disputes: a wrong advance, wrong utilities, a wrong voting right. How many hours?
- Check whether after a death, a sale and a gift the unit card updates in one place.
- Ask for a repair-fund print per building with inflows and spend for the last year — if it is built by hand, you need a system.
- Before you buy anything: decide what stays in the ledger and what is the operational register. Mixing those layers in week one breaks both.
The unit register: the heart of the system, not “a module later”
A unit register in a cooperative is not a developer CRM and not a land-and-mortgage register. It is the card where address and stairwell, usable and ancillary area, rooms, cellar, storage, parking, title, member, persons counted for utilities (if you bill water that way), meters, balances, tickets and documents meet. Without that card the portal, voting and work orders are decoration. With that card the rest attaches. That is why an MVP does not start with “a pretty resident app”. It starts with a register you cannot pull apart in two weeks.
Title must be a field, not a comment. Tenant-cooperative right, owner-cooperative right, separated ownership, lease, commercial unit, service flat — each with a different effect on membership, vote, advance and fund. The person on the card is not “Mr Kowalski”. It is a role: member, spouse, attorney, owner who is not a member, commercial tenant. A system that knows only one person per unit will not handle co-ownership and will not handle a proxy at the meeting.
Area and share are not ornaments on a printout. You calculate operating advances, the share in the repair fund, sometimes heat, from them. A change after a re-measurement or after merging units must have an effective date, an author and a source document (protocol, resolution, survey). A silent cell edit in Excel is the most expensive feature you can leave in place. In a system, editing area without a “from when” date is a defect, not a convenience.
- A stable unit identifier (not “the Excel row number that shifts when someone inserts a line”).
- Building, stairwell, floor, unit, areas, rooms, appurtenances.
- Title with a change history and an effective date.
- Persons and roles: member, owner, attorney, emergency contact.
- Linked assets: storage, attic, parking, garden — separate cards or hard links.
- Meters: type, number, legalisation date, location, reading history.
- Balance: operations, utilities, fund, other — not one “to pay” figure with no split.
- Attachments: deed, annex, handover protocol, power of attorney, GDPR consents.
Some cooperatives also run units that still live like a developer’s: a new building, a sale or the grant of a right, handover, a share contribution. That is next door to a developer property CRM, not the same product. There: reservation and a development contract. Here: after handover the card enters the SM register and leaves the offer. If you are still building, do not force a sales funnel onto the same screen as a payment demand. Two processes, a shared unit id after transfer.
Move, death, auction — a card that outlives a person
Administration knows these three scripts better than any analyst. Sale: deed, notice, change of membership or entry of a non-member owner, correction of demands, refund of an overpayment or takeover of a balance under your rules. Death: heirs, confirmation of acquisition, a temporary contact, who pays advances while title is unsettled. Auction and enforcement: bailiff, new buyer, a balance that must not “disappear” because someone overwrote a row. A unit register without an event history forces a paper file beside the system — and then the system lies within a week. An event has a type, a date, a document and an effect on persons and balances. Not “a note in a yellow cell”.
Operating advances: rate, period, correction, demand
Operating advances are the cooperative’s bloodstream. A member is not “buying a subscription”. They pay an advance on the cost of maintaining the property. At the end of the period (year, half-year — as in your statute and resolutions) you settle the difference. The system must know: components (operations, heat, water, waste, antenna, security, fund), allocation key (m², persons, meter, share), a rate with an effective date, exemptions if you apply them, and the payment account. One amount on a slip with no split ends in “what am I paying for” and an hour at the duty desk.
A mass assessment is not a “magic button”. It is a procedure: close readings, approve rates, calculate, preview exceptions (unit without area, unit without a person, meter without a reading), approve by a role, publish on the portal and print demands. Rolling back a bad run must leave a trace. Overwriting like Excel is forbidden, because in a month you will not reconstruct what the member received. A correction is a new event, not an eraser.
Receipts: a transfer whose title the system should parse (unit + period + component if possible), the cash desk, optionally a portal payment. Allocation to components under your policy (operations first, then utilities, then the fund — or the reverse, as long as it is consistent and matches the resolution). Over- and underpayments visible on the card and the portal. Soft recovery: a demand, an SMS if you have a legal basis and consent, a call note. Hard recovery: a pack for the law firm, not “paste from Excel into Word on Friday”.
- Resolution or rules: components and keys — entered as tariffs, not as the bookkeeper’s memory.
- A calendar of periods: month / quarter; issue date; due date.
- A trial run on one building, then the mass run. Exceptions on the table, not in a log bin.
- Publish: the members’ portal sees the split and the balance the same day, not three weeks later.
- Bank receipts: import, a proposed posting, exceptions for a human match.
- A correction after a reading or a complaint: document, amount, effect on the balance, a note to the member.
- Year close: advances versus costs, a decision to refund or to collect, a trace on the card.
We do not promise this engine will replace the financial-accounting programme overnight. A common, sensible layout: the ledger stays (Symfonia, Optima, Enova or whatever the office uses) and the housing-cooperative programme holds the register, operational assessments, the portal and work orders. Export of entries or balances into the ledger — after a chart-of-accounts agreement. The other way: payment status. If someone sells you “full statutory accounts in a weekend”, ask about the certified accountant and about liability for the report. GESOFT does not sell that as a trick.
The repair fund: not “a bag for everything”
The repair fund is one of the most common sources of conflict at the general meeting. Members pay in. The board spends. The supervisory board asks on what. If the answer is “on repairs, the spreadsheet has a total”, the debate becomes personal, not about the roof. The Housing Cooperatives Act and the statute require funds to be gathered for repairs of the stock. The detail (per property, whether transfers are allowed, how you show interest, how you show the plan) is yours. The system must show: inflow from advances, other inflow, spend linked to jobs (stairwell 3 roof, building B balconies, the lift), the balance and the plan. Without that, every thermal upgrade becomes a myth.
A repair job is a card: scope, building, estimate, a resolution or a board decision inside the plan, contractor, annexes, handover, invoices, warranty, photos. Fund spend without a job is a hole through which trust disappears. A job without an invoice is a hole in control. An invoice without KSeF where KSeF is mandatory is already a tax risk, not just “mess”. A multi-year plan (even a simple one: five years, roofs, stacks, lifts, insulation) should live in the same place as the balances, not in a slide deck for one meeting.
Thermal upgrades and grants (including BGK and NFOŚiGW programmes, which Sobczak in Studia BAS discusses among barriers and chances for cooperatives) need a file: application, decision, schedule, settlement, durability. That is not a “EU grants for every SM in Poland” module. It is a case folder with dates and amounts, pinned to a building and to the repair fund. Paper in the president’s cupboard will not survive a term of office.
Utility billing: reading, correction, season, complaint
Utility billing is where Excel dies fastest. Cold water, hot water, heat, sometimes common-parts electricity, gas, waste by persons or bins. Reading sources: manual, radio, a collector’s app, a supplier file. Each source lies differently. A missing reading. A back-dated reading. A meter swap mid-period. An empty unit. A unit with an extra person. An estimate under the rules. A correction after a complaint. If those events have no type and no date, the bookkeeper calculates “by feel” and the member on the landing has their own truth.
A good process does not start with “an app with a consumption chart”. It starts with the meter on the unit card and with a reading window. The collector (staff or a firm) gets a list. Android in the field: unit, meter, value, photo, GPS if you want it, no-access with a reason. Sync when coverage returns in the basement. Administration sees gaps. Estimates follow a rule, not “I’ll paste last period”. Mass billing after the window closes. The portal shows consumption and the amount. A complaint enters as a case, not as a comment on the cooperative’s Facebook page.
- A dictionary of utilities and units; an estimate rule for a missing reading — written down, not “everyone knows”.
- A reading window with a deadline; a daily gap list, not on the Sunday before billing.
- Meter swap: old closing reading, new opening reading, date, protocol.
- Import from the heat or water supplier if the file is stable; map to units, exceptions on the table.
- A trial run: zero or absurd consumption to explain.
- Publish on the portal + the demand; a complaint with a reply deadline.
- A correction as a document, not a silent cell change.
Heat may be billed by area, by heat-cost allocators, by meters plus common costs — depending on the installation and the resolutions. We do not put a “single correct formula” in this article, because there is none. We put a requirement: the formula is a parameter you can show a member (“this is how we bill heat in this building since the resolution of…”). A black box even administration cannot explain is worse than a paper rule on the notice board.
A members’ portal: not Facebook, not a PDF from mail
A members’ portal is now an expected minimum, not a luxury. A member wants: the balance, the advance split, utilities, documents (rules, resolutions, minutes to the extent they are entitled to see them), a fault report, sometimes a booking of the common room or a skip slot. They do not want accounts in six vendor apps. They do not want to wait for duty hours to hear a figure you already have in Excel. A portal that shows a different amount from the demand is worse than no portal.
Login: a unique id, a password, optionally a second factor. Not PESEL as the password. Not one shared PIN for the stairwell. Roles: a member sees their unit and general documents; an attorney — what the power covers; the board — reports, not a neighbour’s balance “out of curiosity”; administration — the register. Publishing resolutions and notices with a date and a version. A file replaced by a new one does not vanish from history: someone may have relied on it. A portal ticket gets a number and a status (accepted / in progress / done / rejected with a reason). Silence is worse than “not today, we are waiting for a part”.
- Balance and a history of charges / receipts, split by component.
- Demands and confirmations to download (PDF), the same figure as in the register.
- Readings and utility billing — consumption, period, corrections.
- A fault report with a photo; a case number; a history.
- Documents: statute, rules, notices, cooperative resolutions online to the extent published.
- Contact data and consents (GDPR) the member can update with a confirmation.
- Optional: room booking, moderated neighbour notices, voting.
The portal does not replace organs. It is not the general meeting. It is a channel that cuts the duty queue and leaves a trace. “Friday from 10:00 water off on stairwell 4”, sent to people on that stairwell, is cheaper than a notice that fell off the board. SMS — if you have a legal basis and consent, or a legitimate interest in an emergency — is a tool, not spam. Adopt a communication rule before you send the first mass SMS about arrears.
Does a resident need an app in the Google store? Usually not at the start. A mobile-first portal is enough. A native app makes sense when you want push, resident meter scans or a strong brand need. Do not force a 75-year-old to create a Google account to see a balance. A password and a link from the demand will do. An Android app is, however, very much in place for the field crew — below.
Cooperative resolutions online: document, quorum, trace — not a “like”
Cooperative resolutions online do not mean you move the general meeting to Facebook. They mean the convening, the papers, the eligible list, any vote in a mode the statute and the act allow, and the archive of resolutions live in the system, not in an inbox. Cooperative Law and the Housing Cooperatives Act set the organs and the form. The detail (delegates, a written vote, electronic means) depends on the statute and the current wording of the law. The system adapts to them. Not the other way around.
A minimum that always makes sense, whether you vote in a hall or partly remotely: an eligible list generated from the unit register as of a date, not “from the file before the last three moves”. A pack of papers (agenda, report, repair plan, draft resolutions) published with a date. Confirmation of who downloaded what. An attendance or a vote list. The text of the resolution, the result, annexes, a signature / copy. Search: “lift building C”, “house rules”. The board and attorneys should not ask the secretariat for “that 2019 resolution”. They should find it in a minute, within their rights.
If the statute and the law allow a vote by electronic means, the system can: authenticate the person, show the draft, collect the vote, tally, leave a log (who, when, on which document). This is not a Google Form. It is an act of an organ. An error on the eligible list is more expensive than the whole portal. That is why we add voting when the register no longer lies — not as the first screen of the project. MVP: archive + publication + the list. Voting: stage two or three.
Tickets, work orders and maintenance: from the phone to handover
A fault does not wait for duty hours. It leaks, it does not heat, it does not open, it smells, it has burst. Today: a phone, a scrap of paper, Messenger to the caretaker, an SMS to the president. Tomorrow: nobody knows whether anyone went. After a week: a complaint on the landing and a second call. The service part of a cooperative system is simple: a ticket has a number, a unit, a category, a priority, a description, a photo, a reporter, a status and a history. A portal ticket, a duty-phone ticket (administration types it) and a caretaker’s walk-around ticket fall into one queue.
A work order for the crew or for an outside firm comes from a ticket or from the inspection plan. Scope, SLA (how many hours for a leak, how many days for a bulb), contractor, cost (operations, fund, or a charge to the unit if the user is at fault — under the rules), handover, warranty. The caretaker should not get a spoken “go to number four”. They should get a job with an address and a contact. After the job: a note, a photo, time. That is the basis for paying the outside firm and for defending the charge that “you never do anything”.
- Categories and priorities: leak / heating / lift / electrics / order / other.
- A queue: new, assigned, in progress, waiting for a part, closed, rejected.
- A link to the unit and the building; a view “open on stairwell 3”.
- Cost and funding source (operations, repair fund, a charge to the member).
- Periodic inspections as recurring orders, not as the foreman’s memory.
- A board report: volume, response time, cost, repeat faults (the same stack).
Android for the field crew: the basement has no Excel
The caretaker, the meter collector, the works coordinator and security do not work at a desk. An Android app (GESOFT builds native field apps — see our field-service work) must work in the basement, on the roof and in the lift. The day’s job list. A map or a building list. An offline ticket card. A meter reading with a photo. A “no access” status. In/out time if you bill an outside firm. A push on a “leak” priority. This is not the members’ portal in another colour. It is a shift tool.
Sync when coverage returns. A ban on “a notebook beside the app because it dies in the basement” — if offline does not work, the crew will stay with the notebook forever. Rights: the crew sees jobs and emergency contacts, not a neighbour’s balance and not a PESEL. GDPR in the field is harder than at the duty desk, because phones are lost. Policy: a lock, remote wipe of a work device, a ban on private photos of flooded flats on Facebook. Training five people is cheaper than one data leak.
We do not roll out Android in week one if the register and the work-order queue do not yet exist. First the office sees one queue. Then the crew gets that queue in a pocket. The reverse order ends in a toy app and Excel still in charge.
KSeF: the cooperative as a taxpayer, not as “an exception from invoices”
A housing cooperative is a legal person and a taxpayer. Some benefits for members you settle with advances and notes. Some — commercial leases, recharges, services, asset sales — with invoices. The National e-Invoice System, according to the Ministry of Finance, became mandatory from 1 February 2026 for taxpayers whose 2024 sales including VAT exceeded PLN 200 million, and from 1 April 2026 for others. This is not “a module for corporations”. It is a calendar that also hits an SM if you issue VAT invoices in scope.
A practical split we keep on projects: structured invoices where KSeF is required — usually in the accounting programme or through an integrator, with the KSeF number returning to the counterparty card (commercial tenant, contractor). Operating advances and member demands are often another document; we do not force them into an e-invoice “to tick a box”. A conversation with the cooperative’s bookkeeper and tax adviser matters more than the button colour. GESOFT integrates when the panel itself issues and when that is in scope. We do not claim every advance slip is a KSeF invoice. We do claim that 1 February / 1 April 2026 must not surprise you in March.
Large cooperatives with commercial leases, façade advertising and sales of energy or services can hit thresholds a “housing” board does not think about. 2024 sales including tax — a question for accounts, not for the programmer. If you are above PLN 200 million gross for 2024, the February date is yours. If not — April. Deferrals for the smallest “digitally excluded” taxpayers, which the ministry describes, are for the bookkeeper to judge, not for a software-house article.
e-Deliveries: a cooperative in KRS is not “just another e-mail”
Biznes.gov.pl in its guide to e-Deliveries for businesses states expressly that besides commercial companies, other entities entered in the KRS entrepreneurs’ register, for example cooperatives, must have an e-Deliveries address. This is not a novelty “for sole traders”. It is an official correspondence channel with an effect close to a registered letter. A box in the Entrepreneur Account or with a qualified provider cannot be a password known to one person on leave.
In the cooperative system, e-Deliveries need not be built in the first sprint. There must be a process: who administers the box, who reads, how a letter lands on a case (unit, member, contractor, office), how you count deadlines. A paper mail log that ignores the ADE box is a hole. We do not invent extra dates beyond what biznes.gov.pl states — you check the calendar of duties in the official guide and with counsel, because dates have been amended. The fact you do not amend: a cooperative in KRS is not “out of scope”.
GDPR: a member is not a marketing record
A cooperative file is PESEL, address, phone, e-mail, balances, meters, flood photos, sometimes data on persons in the unit, powers of attorney, recovery files. That is personal data under the GDPR, often data about an economic situation, sometimes — on tickets that mention a neighbour, a child, a disability — data you should not collect at all without a need. Controller: the cooperative. Processor: the SaaS vendor or GESOFT if we host. A processing agreement, location, backups, retention, data-subject rights (access, rectification, restriction — knowing that the membership register and settlements have statutory bases and do not “delete on request like a newsletter”).
- Roles and minimisation: the caretaker does not see a balance and a PESEL; the board does not browse others’ arrears “out of curiosity”.
- Access logs on sensitive cards (recovery, court files).
- Passwords, 2FA for administration, a ban on a shared “secretariat” login.
- Retention: a file after a sale does not live forever in the same scope; the resolution archive — yes; health data from a ticket — no.
- Consents separated from a statutory duty: estate marketing is not the same as a payment demand.
- An incident: a procedure, not “we’ll see”. The caretaker’s phone with a gallery of floods is a leak vector.
Packaged products: Weles3, Mieszczanin, System Lokale — honestly
The market is not empty. Weles3 is an online property-management programme widely used in communities, by managers and by accounting offices; the vendor also addresses cooperatives. Mieszczanin positions itself as software for housing cooperatives, communities and social-housing initiatives, with a register and settlements. System Lokale (MMSoft) has long been a recognised package for managers, communities and cooperatives, with an emphasis on settlements and with LokaleNET for residents. These are real products. Some boards should buy them rather than write their own.
SaaS and a package win when: your model is close to the standard (advances, utilities, demands, a simple portal), you do not need a deep SM/community split under your own resolutions, you are not building voting and a document flow around a statute that leaves the template, and you want to start in weeks, not quarters. You pay a subscription. Fit is limited by the vendor’s price list and roadmap. Data sit with the vendor (check the processing agreement and the export). That is an honest trade if you entered it with your eyes open.
A custom system (what GESOFT builds) wins when: SaaS will not take your allocation key or your mix of titles; the portal must live under your domain with your documents and your vote; crews need offline Android wired to your SLAs; you want integrations with the existing ledger, the bank, the heat supplier, e-Deliveries — on your terms; or when a “per unit” licence on several thousand units and several estates stops being cheaper than your own engine over a few years. We do not start with the general ledger. We start with the register, operational assessments, the portal and work orders. The ledger stays until there is a reason to move it.
What GESOFT builds, and what we do not promise
We build web apps (Laravel, Vue) and Android for the field. For a cooperative that means: a card file, assessments, a portal, resolutions as an archive and optionally a vote, a work-order queue, a crew app, board reports. We do not sell a “ministry-stamped SM package”. We do not deploy a chart of accounts in the dark. We do not promise the accounting office vanishes after two weeks. If you already run Weles3, Mieszczanin or System Lokale and only the portal or only the field hurts — we add the missing piece instead of burning the register.
Neighbouring products from our portfolio that a board sometimes confuses with this project: a developer CRM (sales and reservations, not SM advances), invoicing, a CRM. Housing-cooperative software is the operation of a stock and of members. Development is a funnel. You can join them on a unit id after handover. You must not melt them into one “property” screen.
A staged MVP: how not to kill the billing season
The worst project is “everything on 1 January”. 1 January is the assessment, the readings and the duty desk. A go-live in the peak ends with a return to Excel and a bad name for the system for three board terms. We tie the calendar to yours: a window after utility settlement, not in the middle of readings; administration training when the general meeting is not next week; a members’ portal when the figure on the slip matches the card.
- Stage 0 — inventory: units, titles, meters, tariffs, funds, who is the source of truth, what stays in the ledger.
- Stage 1 — the unit register + persons + roles + a balance import. A parallel run with Excel until the card is trusted.
- Stage 2 — operating advances and demands on one building, then the whole stock. Payment import.
- Stage 3 — utility billing: a reading window, exceptions, corrections. A collector’s Android if the reading is yours.
- Stage 4 — the members’ portal: balance, documents, tickets. A launch notice, not a surprise.
- Stage 5 — work orders and crew Android; inspections; cost tied to the repair fund.
- Stage 6 — a resolution archive, then cooperative resolutions online (voting) if the statute allows.
- Stage 7 — integrations: KSeF where you invoice, the bank, e-Deliveries as a process, reports for the board and the meeting.
Data migration: we do not move fifteen years of junk. We move the current state of units, persons, meters, balances and the documents you need to bill and to inspect. Deep history stays in the archive (PDF, the old programme, a scan). If the old programme gives a clean export — we take it. If not — a manual inventory of some fields is cheaper than an automatic that carries area errors into the next five years. A decision: which date is “day zero” for balances. Usually: after a month close or after a utility settlement.
Reports a board will actually use in a sitting
A supervisory board does not need 40 dashboards. It needs a few numbers it trusts. Collection of advances (overall and per building). Repair-fund balance versus plan. Operating cost per m² versus last year (carefully: without a marketing “industry benchmark” we do not cite, because we have no study of our own). Open tickets and response time. Units above an agreed arrears threshold. Utilities: units with no reading. That can go on the table. A 30-sheet workbook built the night before the sitting is an indictment of the process, not a badge of honour.
The general meeting gets another layer: a report that can be tied back to the cards (fund, investment, advances). We do not promise a generator of the statutory report “click and a PDF for KRS”. We promise that the numbers in the slides will not come from a third, hand-glued file. The difference is felt when someone on the floor asks about stairwell 7.
Recovery that does not start with a bailiff
Arrears in a cooperative are socially different from arrears at a telecom. A neighbour sees a neighbour. Hard recovery without a soft path spoils the meeting. Soft without hard spoils the fund. The system needs: a threshold (how many days, how many zloty), a demand via the portal and by letter, a call note, a promise to pay with a date, a schedule if the board so decides, a pack for the law firm with a history of charges and receipts. Not an automatic “AI score”. A list you do not have to assemble from three spreadsheets on a Friday.
Interest and costs: under resolutions and the law, not “because that is what the cell said”. A freeze, a settlement, a death, a receiver — states that block a stupid automaton. The portal shows the arrears honestly. Hiding a balance “so as not to upset people” ends with a debtor who says they did not know. Knowledge + a deadline + a trace. The rest is a decision of the organs, not of the software.
Commercial units, parking, antennas, leases — a second revenue engine
A ground floor of shops, a garage hall, a roof of operators, a gable advertisement: that is not a member advance. It is a lease or a civil contract, often with VAT, a deposit, indexation, a notice period, an invoice and — from 2026 — KSeF. The unit register should know those assets as separate cards, not as “a note on stairwell 1”. A contract calendar, a reminder of the end, indexation, deposit, tenant balances. A tenant portal can be the same login with another role or another view. Do not mix a member demand with an invoice for the shop on the ground floor — another document, another KSeF, another recovery.
Parking and storage: assigned to a unit or a separate title, a waiting list, what happens after a flat is sold (does the space travel with the unit?). Chaos in the garage hall is everyday life that a cheap list closes better than a camera. The app need not drive the barrier in the MVP. It must know who may enter and who is in arrears for the space.
Security, roles, backup, a term of office
Boards and management boards end. The system must not live “on the president’s Gmail”. Owner of the instance: the cooperative. Roles: a functional admin, accounts, duty desk, field, board (read), audit. Backups: regular, restore-tested, not “the IT people have it somewhere”. Access after a staff member leaves: cut that day. This is banal and most often neglected. After a term-of-office dispute the resolutions turn out to sit on a USB stick that is gone.
Hosting in the EU, HTTPS, updates, a ban on installing a “free voting plugin from the internet”. If SaaS — ask about location and export. If GESOFT — the same in the contract. A pen-test is not mandatory on day one at 200 units. It is reasonable once you expose a portal with balances to the internet. A minimum set: 2FA for administration, login limits, a log.
The cost of not deciding: not the licence, the term of office
A board that postpones the system “until after the utility deadline” postpones it forever. Readings end, the meeting starts, then holidays, then winter, then a new term and a new promise. In that time GUS adds more dwellings toward almost 16 million, and your stairwell still bills water from a notebook. A housing-cooperative programme is not a prize for order. It is the tool that makes that order possible once there are more units than one bookkeeper’s memory.
You do not have to build your own. You do have to stop having three truths. If a package does that — buy the package and demand an export. If it does not, because you are a mix of SM and community, because you want a members’ portal under your domain, because the crew should walk with Android, because cooperative resolutions online must match the statute, not a template — describe how many units and buildings you have, whether you read meters yourselves and whether the ledger stays. A quote from the register and from the billing calendar, not from “a platform for all cooperatives in Poland”.
How to talk to a vendor so you do not buy a slide deck
Questions worth asking us and anyone else before the word “implementation” lands: where does the source of truth about area sit after you sign? Who is liable for a wrong assessment — your bookkeeper, or “the algorithm”? What does the export look like if you leave in three years? Can utility billing take a file from your heat supplier, or only “our format”? Does the portal show the same amount as the demand, or “more or less”? Is voting in the price, or in a folder called “someday”? Does Android work offline? Is the GDPR processing agreement an annex, or “on request”? “It can be done” without a stage date is marketing.
Internally, before the call, the board and the management board should write two pages: how many units and of which titles, how many buildings, who reads the meters, which ledger, what the largest pain is (utilities, portal, resolutions, field, fund), what must work before the next general meeting, and what can wait. That note is a better brief than “we want to be modern”. Modernity without a unit register is a slide. A register without a portal will still cut the duty desk. A portal without a register will cut trust.
Frequently asked questions
- Will housing-cooperative software replace the accounting programme?
- Not overnight and not as a brochure promise. A typical layout: the ledger stays, and the cooperative system holds the unit register, advances, utilities, the portal and work orders. An export of balances or entries — after an agreement with the bookkeeper. The statutory report is not “a weekend button”.
- How is a cooperative programme different from community software?
- A cooperative has members, cooperative rights (tenant and owner) and organs under the Housing Cooperatives Act and the Cooperative Law. A community is the totality of owners. One stairwell is often a mix. A community template without cooperative titles will break the register. We describe community software and property-manager software separately.
- How many housing cooperatives are there in Poland?
- It depends on the register. KRS on 13 September 2023 — 4,014 entities (Sobczak, Studia BAS). COIG’s commercial extract of 26 January 2026 — 3,444. GUS measures units in the stock (from 3.4 million in 2005 to under 2 million in 2020, historically about 13% of the stock). Secondary blogs write of about 2,950 “active” cooperatives — a compilation, not a table we opened. For a project your units still count, not a national average.
- Do we have to have a members’ portal?
- There is no rule that forces “an app in the store”. There is operational pressure: balance, demand, ticket, documents. A mobile portal is enough at the start. The same figure as on the slip. Without it the duty desk eats a post and the cooperative’s Facebook becomes a complaints office.
- Are cooperative resolutions online legal?
- An archive and publication — yes, and they should exist. A vote by electronic means — only to the extent the statute and the act allow. We do not move the general meeting onto a survey. First an eligible list from the register, then maybe a vote.
- From when does KSeF apply to a cooperative?
- According to ksef.podatki.gov.pl: 1 February 2026 if 2024 sales including tax exceeded PLN 200 million, 1 April 2026 for others. That is about invoices in scope (including commercial leases), not about treating every operating advance as an e-invoice. The bookkeeper confirms the date and the scope.
- Do e-Deliveries cover cooperatives?
- Yes, as entities in the KRS entrepreneurs’ register — biznes.gov.pl says so in the e-Deliveries guide. An ADE address and a box administrator are a correspondence process, not “a module in the first sprint”. You check duty dates in the official source, because they have been amended.
- Weles3, Mieszczanin, System Lokale — should we build our own?
- If standard assessments and a portal are enough, buy a package and demand an export and a processing agreement. We build custom when SaaS cannot hold the model (SM/community, a statute-shaped vote, offline Android, integrations, a portal under your domain). We do not burn a working register on principle.
- How long is the MVP?
- A register + advances on one stock is usually weeks and months of data calibration, not a weekend. Portal, utilities, work orders and the field we add in stages, outside the reading peak. Voting and KSeF — when the unit card no longer lies. We tie the calendar to your meeting and your utility window.
- What about GDPR and members’ data?
- The cooperative is the controller. PESEL, balances, tickets from inside flats — not a newsletter list. Roles, a processing agreement, retention, no shared login, 2FA for administration. The portal lets a member update a contact. The caretaker does not get a neighbour’s balance on a private phone.
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