A single building can survive on memory. A portfolio can't — every obligation below has a different trigger date, and the ones that get missed are never the famous ones.
Key takeaways
STEP 01 OF 10
Before a calendar has a single entry, list every recurring obligation across the portfolio by building type: condo corporations carry AGM, reserve-fund and records-request duties a rental-only building doesn't; any building with an elevator carries technical-safety duties none of the others do. Group by trigger type — fiscal-year-end-anchored, contract-anchored, or fixed-date — before worrying about software.
Start with the obligations that carry a stated penalty or a hard deadline, not the ones that feel most urgent this week. A missed Annual General Meeting deadline or a lapsed clearance certificate has a real consequence attached; a "should get to it" maintenance task does not belong on the same list.
A ten-building inventory usually surfaces the same four categories every time: governance (AGM, records), capital adequacy (reserve fund), vendor risk (clearances, insurance), and technical safety (elevating devices, electrical). Build the calendar around those four, then slot each building's specific entries underneath.
STEP 02 OF 10
A condo corporation must complete its first reserve fund study within the first year after the declaration is registered; after that, class 2 and class 3 studies alternate at least every three years (Condominium Authority of Ontario, citing s.94(8) and s.37(1) of the Condominium Act and s.32 of O.Reg 48/01). None of that runs on 1 January. Each corporation's study clock starts on its own registration date.
The board must then review the study within 120 days of receiving it, and send owners a notice of the funding plan within 15 days of proposing one. Those two sub-deadlines belong in the calendar as their own entries, not folded into "reserve fund review."
STEP 03 OF 10
CAO states corporations must hold their AGM "within six months after the end of each fiscal year," with preliminary notice sent at least 20 days before the notice of meeting goes out, and the notice of meeting itself at least 15 days before the AGM. Quorum starts at 25% of units and steps down to 15% on the third and later attempts if earlier attempts fail (condoauthorityontario.ca).
A six-building portfolio with six different fiscal year ends has six different AGM deadlines. Put each one on the calendar the day you take on the building — not the week the deadline arrives.
STEP 04 OF 10
A status certificate must be provided within 10 days of a request, capped at $100 including tax (CAO). A separate 30-day clock applies to an owner's formal request for records: "Condo boards must use this form to respond to records requests from owners, mortgagees, purchasers or their authorized representatives within 30 days of the request" (CAO, board-response-to-request-for-records).
These are request-triggered, not calendar-triggered — so the entry in your system isn't a date, it's a rule: the day a request lands, a 10-day or 30-day counter starts. Build that logic into the calendar tool itself, not a note beside it.
STEP 05 OF 10
A WSIB clearance certificate "is valid for all your contracts and is valid for up to 90 days" (wsib.ca/en/clearances). That is a vendor-side obligation, but it belongs on your calendar too: an expired clearance on a vendor still on site is your exposure, not just theirs.
BC works differently. WorkSafeBC's clearance letter "shifts liability" for the entire length of the contract rather than expiring on a fixed day count — a genuinely different regime, not a stricter or looser version of Ontario's (worksafebc.com/en/insurance/why-clearance-letter). If your portfolio spans both provinces, the recheck cadence in the calendar has to differ by building, not just by vendor.
STEP 06 OF 10
Ontario's Technical Standards and Safety Authority names two governing regulations directly: O.Reg 209/01 (Elevating Devices) for overall compliance and O.Reg 222/01 for mechanic certification and training, plus a Maintenance Control Program that owners and contractors are jointly responsible for keeping current (tssa.org, Compliance Standards: Electric/Traction Elevators).
That MCP interval and any TSSA inspection date belong in the calendar as a building-specific entry, not a portfolio-wide assumption — a building with no elevator has no entry here at all.
STEP 07 OF 10
"Almost all electrical work" in Ontario must be reported to the Electrical Safety Authority by filing a notification of work before the work starts, and "having a building permit isn't the same as filing an electrical notification. You may need both" (esasafe.com). ESA states plainly that fees "vary according to the type of work you're doing" — don't put a flat number on this line of the calendar; put a process step instead.
This obligation is capital-project-triggered, not recurring, so it lives in the calendar as a checklist item attached to any work order above a threshold you set, not as a fixed annual date.
STEP 08 OF 10
The reserve fund study's financial analysis "must include a recommended funding plan projected over a period of at least 30 consecutive years" (CAO), and the board's adequacy plan must have the fund on track "by the fiscal year after the study was completed." Reviewing that alongside the corporation's own insurance renewal — not the vendor insurance certificates covered in step 5 — catches a coverage gap while there's still budget cycle time to fix it.
Keep these two reviews on the same calendar entry deliberately: a reserve fund shortfall and an insurance renewal are both capital-adequacy questions, and a board that only sees them separately tends to treat both as smaller than they are.
STEP 09 OF 10
A usable register needs five fields per entry: the obligation, its trigger date or rule, the accountable owner, the lead time required before the deadline, and where the evidence is filed once it's done. A spreadsheet is enough at ten buildings; a portfolio much larger than that needs a system that can flag an approaching deadline without a person remembering to look.
Resist the urge to build one column for "status" with values like "OK" or "overdue." A binary status field hides exactly the information a compliance calendar exists to surface — how many days of lead time are actually left.
Store the evidence link in the same row as the obligation, not in a separate folder structure someone has to go find. When a request-for-records deadline lands, or a regulator asks a question, the person answering it should be able to open one row and see both the deadline and the proof it was met.
STEP 10 OF 10
An annual audit finds problems after most of the deadlines they relate to have already passed. A quarterly pass — walking every open entry against its actual trigger date — catches a missed reserve-fund review or an AGM date creeping close while there's still time to act.
Treat every quarterly audit as an opportunity to retire entries that no longer apply (a building sold, a corporation wound up) as much as to add new ones. A register that only grows becomes noise, and noise is exactly what causes a real deadline to get missed.
Treating a corporation's fiscal year end as the calendar year end. The AGM deadline runs six months from each corporation's own fiscal year end, not from 31 December — a portfolio with staggered fiscal years has staggered deadlines, and a calendar built around 1 January will miss most of them.
Tracking a vendor's insurance certificate but not their WSIB clearance separately. The two documents expire on different schedules and cover different risks. A vendor can carry current insurance with a lapsed clearance, and the clearance is the one with a 90-day Ontario expiry to track.
Copying a BC clearance-renewal cadence onto an Ontario building, or the reverse. WorkSafeBC's clearance letter and WSIB's clearance certificate are structured differently — one covers a fixed contract length, the other expires on a fixed day count regardless of the contract. Set the cadence per province, not per portfolio.
Building one column called "status" instead of a lead-time field. A binary OK/overdue flag hides the one thing a compliance calendar exists to surface — how many days are actually left before a deadline stops being manageable. Track days-remaining, not a colour.
Scenario A. A corporation's fiscal year ends 31 December 2025. Its AGM deadline is therefore 30 June 2026 (six months out). A new management contract for that building starts 1 March 2026. That leaves the incoming manager roughly 17.3 weeks — about 17 weeks — to confirm the AGM has been calendared, chase any outstanding financials, and send the 20-day preliminary notice with enough runway left before the 15-day notice-of-meeting deadline. A calendar entry created on day one of the contract, rather than discovered in week 14, is the entire difference between a routine AGM and a rushed one.
Scenario B. The same six-building portfolio, staggered fiscal years. If the six year-ends fall one per month from January through June, the six AGM deadlines land one per month from July through December — a rolling, not seasonal, workload. A calendar that only prompts once a year for "AGM season" will miss five of the six.
No. A condo corporation carries AGM, reserve-fund and records-request duties a rental-only building doesn't have at all, and only a building with an elevating device carries a TSSA entry. Build the calendar by building type, then apply it building by building.
The 30-day clock starts the day the request lands regardless of whether your system was ready for it. Build the request-triggered rules into the calendar before you need them, not after the first request arrives.
The property manager is usually the operational owner, since they're the one executing the recurring tasks, but the board should see the register at each meeting. A calendar only one person can see is a single point of failure.
A building with no condo corporation skips the AGM, reserve-fund and records-request entries entirely, but it still carries WSIB clearance tracking on its vendor list, and a TSSA entry if it has an elevator. The calendar shrinks by building type — it doesn't disappear.
A 30-minute call is enough to map the obligations that actually carry a deadline.
