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Managing a building in Québec: software that reads the Civil Code

Co-ownership, residential leasing and showings: the Symbifox Buildings suite, and what it refuses to do

TL;DR: most property management software is designed for North America as a whole. It offers you a "security deposit" field that is forbidden here, a meeting majority you set in a menu, and a homemade lease where the Tribunal requires its own form. The Symbifox Buildings suite adds co-ownership, residential leasing and building operations to Odoo, written from the Civil Code of Québec. It keeps the maintenance log, the general meeting, the certificate for the notary, the lease attached to the official form, notices and rent. It also tells you what it refuses to do.


In this article



Annual general meeting, a Tuesday evening, in the common room. The board puts improvements to the common portions to a vote. The manager's software counts the votes and shows "carried": 68% of the votes of those present, and the majority had been set to two thirds on a settings screen four years earlier.

Except that choice was never anyone's to make. The Civil Code itself sets that majority at three quarters (art. 1097), and article 1101 deems unwritten any clause that changes the number of votes required. A co-owner who objects has 90 days to apply to have a decision annulled when an error occurred in counting the votes (art. 1103). The meeting has to be held again, and the work waits.

This is not badly made software. It is software made elsewhere, where the majority is a preference. In Québec, divided co-ownership and residential leases are governed article by article, and a tool that ignores this lets you make the mistake through a nice interface. So we wrote a suite that starts from the text of the law: the Buildings family of Symbifox, our applications for Odoo.


Three habits of imported software that do not work here

The security deposit. Elsewhere in North America, it is an ordinary field. Here, article 1904 says the lessor may not exact any sum other than the rent, "by way of a deposit or otherwise". The lease form repeats it: not even a deposit for the keys. Software that carries this field, even empty, invites you to use it.

The homemade lease. The regulation on mandatory lease forms requires the lessor to use the form of the Tribunal administratif du logement. Every one of its pages carries the words "Reproduction interdite". A tool that generates its own lease, however polished, produces a document the lessor cannot use in place of the form.

The configurable majority. Articles 1096, 1097 and 1098 set three majorities, each for its own decisions. Since January 10, 2020, article 1097 no longer requires a majority in number of co-owners, even though much of the material online still describes one. A percentage you adjust in a menu is exactly what article 1101 forbids.


Co-ownership: the meeting, the log and the sale

The core of the suite holds what the syndicate needs to know about itself: the building, the fractions, their relative values and their occupants. Everything else builds on it.

A meeting that holds up

The meeting is prepared and held on a single record. The notice of meeting is checked against the 10-to-45-day window. The attendance sheet loads the votes from the register, the quorum is computed, and each resolution shows the majority that applies along with its article. The count is explained in votes, including the cases people forget: the developer and its caps, the fraction held by the syndicate, the co-owner deprived of the right to vote, undivided co-owners voting under a presumed mandate. Secret ballots are supported. The minutes can be signed electronically, and their 30-day transmission deadline (art. 1102.1) is tracked.

The maintenance log and the contingency fund study

The Civil Code asks the board to have a maintenance log drawn up describing the maintenance done and to be done, and to keep it up to date (art. 1070.2). The regulation that came into force on August 14, 2025 sets out its content, who may draw it up and how often it must be reviewed. According to Québec.ca, syndicates have three years and one day to have their log drawn up and obtain a first contingency fund study, which takes them to mid-August 2028.

The suite does not replace the professional who draws up the log. The regulation reserves that work for members of four professional orders who are independent of the building: the property manager cannot do it. What the suite does is keep the log alive between two reviews. Maintenance closed in the field dates the equipment it concerns. What was due and was not done shows up too, with the reason. The fund study relies on this log, and its deadlines are tracked in the same place.

The certificate for the notary

When a co-owner sells, they must give the buyer a certificate from the syndicate on the state of the co-ownership, and the syndicate has 15 days to provide it (art. 1068.1). Its content is set by regulation: the contingency fund and the study's recommendation, contributions over the last three years, the current budget, insurance, losses and work over the last five years, work planned over ten years, pending disputes. The suite carries over what it already knows from the register and the financial module. The rest, such as losses or disputes, is entered by hand, and the certificate is not released while anything is missing: the suite names what is missing. Fifteen days is short when the information is scattered across three binders. Documents can be handed to the buyer through a secure transfer rather than an attachment.

On the financial side, the suite keeps the budget, the allocation of common expenses to the cent, calls for contributions, arrears and the contingency fund. Payments are applied the way the Code requires, interest before capital, and no interest rate is hard-coded in place of the syndicate's.


Residential leasing: the lease, notices and rent

The leasing side starts from a simple rule: it does not make leases. You fill in the Tribunal's official form, and the suite attaches the signed copy to the lease record. It records what was agreed: the dwelling, the tenants and whether they are bound jointly and severally, the term, the rent, and the type of form used.

It has no "security deposit" field, and that is deliberate. Postdated cheques are a different case: the lessor cannot require them, but the tenant can agree to them, and the official form has the box. So the suite records that consent when it exists, without imposing it.

Each lease notice has its own deadline, and the other party's silence does not mean the same thing from one notice to the next. The suite computes the dates and tells you what no answer means.

Rent is shown instalment by instalment, with what is still owed. Faced with a late payment, generic tools suggest termination. Article 1971 opens two separate doors: being more than three weeks late, or frequent late payments that cause the lessor serious prejudice. The second has no number attached. So the suite does not count late payments to suggest termination at the fifth one: it shows you where things stand, and the rest belongs to the Tribunal.


Day to day: operations and occupants

The operations side serves a rental building as well as a co-ownership. It lists equipment, schedules its maintenance and tracks the backlog. It also organizes the maintenance team's shifts, without doing payroll or time clocks.

The occupant portal brings together announcements, documents, common area bookings, parcels and visitors. A request made on the portal becomes a work order for the building's team, the office is alerted, and the occupant learns the outcome, settled or not. Once the request is closed, they can be asked whether they are satisfied. Text message notices go only to people who gave express consent.

Tenants have their own read-only portal: their lease, their notices and what they have paid. They are invited with one click, in the lessor's name.


Showings when the dwelling is occupied

Showing a tenant-occupied dwelling to a buyer means 24 hours' notice and a 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. window (art. 1931 and 1932). With the property showings module, these rules apply automatically as soon as you state that a tenant lives there, and the notice sent stays on file. The buyer books on an online page, only during hours when someone allowed to show the property is free. We covered the obligations around a showing in our article Showing a property in Québec.


Occupants' personal information

A syndicate that keeps the register of co-owners processes personal information, and so does a lessor. Law 25 applies to them as it does to a business. Each part of the suite records in the processing register what it collects, with its legal basis and retention period. The consent the Civil Code provides for the co-ownership register is tracked there.

The data stays in your own Odoo database. It does not go through a platform that pools it with that of thousands of other buildings.

Before choosing software for your building, ask it these four questions:

  1. Can I record a security deposit in it?
  2. Where is the majority for a meeting resolution set?
  3. Does it produce its own lease?
  4. What does it suggest when a tenant is two weeks late?

If the answers are "yes", "in the settings", "yes" and "terminate", it does not know the law here.


What the suite does not do

It does not replace your notary, your lawyer, or the professional who draws up the log and the study. It keeps the data and the deadlines, and it flags discrepancies. The decisions remain yours.

It does not set the rent. The Tribunal imposes no increase percentage: it applies criteria if a case is brought before it. So the suite does not offer you a ready-made increase. Where the law gives no number, it says so on screen instead of inventing one: no legal deadline for answering an occupant, no imposed interest rate, no contingency fund floor chosen on the syndicate's behalf.

It does not guess who signs for the syndicate. The declaration of co-ownership sets the board's composition, so the suite asks at the time of sending. Nor does it send the minutes for you. It does no payroll or time clocks for the maintenance team.

And it is still Odoo. It takes someone to look after it: setting up the building, importing the register, training the board or the office team. It is a real project, even if it is shorter than a maintenance log.


How we set it up

The suite's code is published, and the Symbifox catalogue details its modules, with a short demo video. The user guide has two chapters on it, on divided co-ownership and on residential leasing.

For a syndicate, a co-ownership manager or a rental property owner, we start with a demo building: you see the meeting, the log and the lease on fictitious data before touching yours. Then we import your register, set up your buildings and train the people who will use it.

Let's talk about your buildings.


Sources

Implementing free software: seven decisions to make before installing anything
Budget, project health, licence, customization, versions, support and exit: the practices that make a free software implementation last.