Academy/Collections & Delinquencies
Reporting delinquencies to the board
What the board should see about who owes money, and what should never leave executive session.
The board needs a regular delinquency report to oversee collections: total amount overdue, number of accounts, and how long each has been unpaid. Individual owners' names, balances, and personal circumstances belong in executive session, not the open meeting, where minutes and attendance are public record.
What goes in the open-meeting report
A useful delinquency report answers one question for the board: is collection working? It does that with numbers, not names. Many boards use an aging report that groups overdue accounts by how long they've been unpaid, for example 30, 60, and 90 days past due, alongside the total dollar amount outstanding and how that total compares to prior months.
That level of detail lets the board judge whether the collection policy is being followed and whether the delinquency trend is improving, without turning a board meeting into a discussion of any one owner's finances.
What stays behind closed doors
Once the discussion turns to a specific owner, a specific balance, or why that owner fell behind, it moves out of the open meeting. Which delinquency-related discussions the law requires to happen in executive session varies by state; check your state's association statute and your bylaws. California's statute is a concrete illustration of the category.
"the board shall adjourn to, or meet solely in, executive session to discuss a payment plan pursuant to Section 5665"
Source: California Civil Code § 4935, California Legislative Information
California also gives the board discretion to meet privately with an owner, at that owner's request, about their assessment payments. Treat that as one state's version of a broader pattern: an individual owner's delinquency story is not open-meeting business.
Keeping the record straight without breaking confidentiality
Executive session content stays confidential, but the fact that the board addressed a topic there generally does not. Under California's rule, matters handled in executive session are noted in general terms in the minutes of the next open meeting, for example that the board discussed a payment plan, without naming the owner or stating the balance.
How often the board receives a delinquency report at all, monthly, quarterly, or some other cadence, is typically a policy choice your board or management contract sets, not a legal requirement. What matters more is consistency: every delinquent account gets reported and handled the same way, which is the same principle behind consistency in collections.
Check yourself
Answer before you read the explanation, recalling it is what makes it stick.
Mid-meeting, a director starts describing a specific owner's overdue balance and the medical bills behind it, in the open portion of the meeting. What should happen?
The treasurer is preparing the monthly delinquency report for the open board meeting packet. What should it contain?
The board just spent ten minutes in executive session discussing a payment plan for one delinquent owner. What belongs in the minutes of the next open meeting?
Sources
- California Civil Code § 4935, board executive session topics, California Legislative Information
Related elsewhere in the Academy
Collections & Delinquencies
Next, learn how to keep what you discuss in executive session from leaking into the wrong hands: Protecting confidential collection information.
Whether the law requires payment plan or other delinquency discussions to happen in executive session, and what must be noted afterward in the open minutes, vary by state and by your bylaws.