Preparing for a condo audit in Alberta? Learn the documents your CPA auditor needs, how boards can organize financial records, and how a proper audit checklist can make the process faster and smoother.
Condo Audit Checklist: Documents Your Alberta Condo Auditor Needs
The single biggest factor in how long your condo audit takes — and how much it costs — is not the size of your building. It is whether the documents are ready when the auditor starts.
A CPA firm working from a complete document package can move through the file efficiently. A firm working from a half-package spends weeks sending follow-up emails, waiting for replies, and re-opening work it had already started. That time appears on your invoice.
This guide walks through what an Alberta condominium auditor needs, why each item matters, and what happens when it is missing.
For the condensed list you can work from directly, see the Condo Audit Checklist.
Financial Statements and Accounting Records
General Ledger
The general ledger is the complete record of every transaction the corporation made during the year. It is the foundation of the entire audit — nearly every other procedure traces back to it.
Why the auditor needs it: the ledger is what gets tested. The auditor compares it against bank records, invoices, and supporting documents to confirm transactions were real, correctly recorded, and placed in the right period.
Export it in a data format if you can. Most property management systems can produce Excel or CSV. A PDF of the ledger can be worked with, but it takes longer to process, and that difference shows up in the fee.
When it is missing or incomplete: the audit cannot meaningfully begin. This is the one document with no workaround.
Prior-Year Financial Statements
The auditor needs last year's completed statements — the audited or reviewed version, not a draft.
Why: this year's opening balances must agree to last year's closing balances. If they do not, that gap has to be explained before anything else can be relied upon.
When it is missing: the auditor has no verified starting point and may need to perform extra procedures on opening balances, which adds hours.
Trial Balance
A summary of all account balances at year-end. Often produced alongside the general ledger from the same system.
Why: it is the bridge between the detailed ledger and the summarized financial statements.
Banking Records
Bank Statements — All Accounts, All Twelve Months
Every account the corporation holds. Operating, reserve, savings, GIC, and any account opened or closed during the year.
Why: cash is the most directly verifiable asset a condo corporation has. The auditor confirms the recorded balances against statements issued by the bank itself.
Include accounts you think are inactive. An account with no activity still needs to be accounted for, and a forgotten account discovered late in the audit means reopening completed work.
When statements are missing: the auditor cannot verify a portion of your cash. Depending on how much is affected, this can lead to a qualified opinion — meaning the audit report states the auditor could not fully verify the financial statements.
Bank Reconciliations
The monthly working documents that explain the difference between your bank balance and your book balance.
Why: reconciliations demonstrate the corporation is actually monitoring its cash. They also flag outstanding cheques, deposits in transit, and errors.
Where boards often fall short: reconciliations exist for most months but not all, or exist but were never reviewed. A reconciliation prepared and never checked by anyone is a weak control, and auditors notice.
Investment Statements
GICs, term deposits, and any invested reserve funds.
Why: these are corporation assets that must be confirmed and correctly valued at year-end. Interest earned also has to be recorded in the right period.
Reserve Fund Documentation
Reserve fund work is where Alberta condo audits commonly slow down, because reserve records are frequently less organized than operating records.
Reserve Fund Study
The professional assessment of future repair and replacement costs for your common property.
Why: it establishes the context for whether reserve contributions and balances are reasonable. The auditor is not judging whether the study is correct — that is an engineering question — but the study informs how the reserve fund is presented and disclosed.
Provide the most recent version, plus any update completed during the year.
Reserve Fund Transaction Records
Contributions in, expenditures out, transfers between funds, and interest earned.
Why: reserve money is legally distinct from operating money. The auditor confirms it was collected, held, and spent for reserve purposes.
A common problem: reserve expenses paid from the operating account and reimbursed later, with no clear paper trail. This is not necessarily wrong, but it needs to be explained, and reconstructing it after the fact takes time.
Reserve Fund Plan
Your corporation's funding plan showing planned contributions over time.
Why: it demonstrates the board is acting on the study rather than filing it away.
Owner and Revenue Records
Owner Receivable and Arrears Report
A listing of amounts owed by owners at year-end, ideally aged — 30, 60, 90+ days.
Why: the auditor confirms receivables are real and collectible. Long-outstanding arrears may need an allowance for amounts unlikely to be recovered.
Condominium Fee Schedule and Unit Factors
The fee schedule showing what each unit is assessed, along with the unit factor allocation.
Why: condo fee revenue is not ordinary sales revenue. It is a predictable calculation — units times fees times months. The auditor tests whether the revenue recorded matches what should have been billed based on your own fee schedule.
When this is missing: the auditor loses the most efficient revenue test available and has to substitute slower procedures.
Special Assessment Records
If the corporation levied a special assessment, the auditor needs the resolution authorizing it, the amounts assessed per unit, collection records, and documentation of how the money was spent.
Why: special assessments involve owners paying money outside normal fees for a stated purpose. Verifying that funds went to that purpose is a core part of the audit.
Expenses and Supporting Documents
Vendor Invoices
Invoices supporting the expenses recorded in the ledger.
Why: the auditor selects a sample of transactions and traces them to source documents to confirm the expense was real, correctly valued, and properly classified.
You do not need every invoice up front — but you do need to be able to produce any invoice the auditor requests, quickly. Organized files, whether digital or physical, make this a fast exchange rather than a multi-week hunt.
Major Contracts
Management agreements, maintenance contracts, insurance policies, elevator servicing, landscaping, snow removal, and any construction or repair contracts.
Why: contracts establish what the corporation is obligated to pay and reveal commitments extending past year-end that may require disclosure.
Insurance Policy
The current policy covering the corporation.
Why: insurance coverage may be disclosed in the financial statements, and any claims during the year affect the accounting.
Governance Documents
Board Meeting Minutes
Minutes for every board meeting during the year, plus the AGM, plus any meetings held after year-end but before the audit is finished.
Why: minutes are where the auditor learns about matters that may not appear in the ledger — legal disputes, planned major projects, management changes, contract decisions, owner complaints, insurance claims. These can require disclosure in the financial statements.
Post-year-end minutes matter. Events after year-end but before the audit report is signed may need to be disclosed. Boards often forget to send these.
Bylaws
The registered bylaws of the corporation.
Why: in Alberta, the audit requirement itself usually originates in the bylaws rather than in statute. The bylaws may also specify reserve fund requirements and financial reporting obligations specific to your corporation.
Budget
The approved budget for the audited year, and the following year if available.
Why: budget-to-actual comparison helps the auditor identify unusual variances worth investigating, and budgeted assessment revenue supports the revenue testing described above.
What Boards Get Wrong Most Often
Sending documents in batches over several weeks. Each partial delivery means the auditor starts, stops, and restarts. Assemble the full package first, then send it once.
Sending scans of printouts instead of native files. A PDF printout of a spreadsheet has to be manually re-entered. The original Excel file does not.
Forgetting post-year-end information. Bank statements for the months after year-end, minutes from recent meetings, and payments made after year-end for prior-year expenses are all standard requests.
Assuming the property manager has already sent everything. Confirm directly. Managers handle many corporations, and items get missed.
Waiting to be asked. Every day between the auditor's request and your reply is a day the file sits idle.
Frequently Asked Questions
How far in advance should we prepare for a condo audit?
Begin gathering documents shortly after year-end. Most items — bank statements, ledger, minutes, invoices — already exist and only need to be collected. Starting early costs nothing and shortens the engagement.
What if we cannot find some documents?
Tell the auditor early rather than staying silent. Missing items can often be reconstructed — banks reissue statements, vendors resend invoices. What causes problems is discovering a gap late, after work has been built on the assumption the document exists.
Do we need to provide every single invoice?
No. Auditors test a sample. But you need to be able to produce any requested invoice promptly, which in practice means organized files.
Who is responsible for gathering these documents?
Usually the property manager, since most records live in their system. The board remains responsible for ensuring it happens and should confirm completeness rather than assume.
Does better preparation actually reduce the audit fee?
It reduces the hours spent chasing documents and reworking incomplete files. Fees vary by firm and engagement, but the condition of the records is consistently one of the largest factors in condo audit pricing. See our guide to condo audit costs in Alberta.
What is the difference between an audit and a review?
An audit provides a higher level of assurance and involves more extensive procedures. A review is narrower in scope. Which one your corporation needs typically depends on your bylaws or lender requirements. See Alberta condo audit requirements.
Get Your Documents Organized
A well-prepared audit package is the most direct thing a board can do to make the audit faster, smoother, and less expensive.
Use the Condo Audit Checklist to work through the required documents for your corporation, or request an audit quote.
Written by the Condo Audit Pro team. Our audit logic was built over more than a year with a retired Canadian CPA — shaped from real published condominium and strata financial statements, reserve fund studies and depreciation reports, and each province’s legislation. More about how we built it.
The platform that prepares the file. The CPA decides.
Built for condominium and strata audits across Alberta, BC, and Ontario. Document collection, GL matching, two-fund classification, fee testing — handled before the CPA opens the file.