Running a paperless condominium meeting in 2026

The AGM used to mean a Saturday morning, a printed agenda, a room that was too small, and half the owners sending apologies. Post-2020, most jurisdictions allow — and many now encourage — fully digital meetings, with electronic voting and electronic minutes. Attendance goes up, costs go down, and the archive is searchable. Here is how to run one properly.

Two weeks before: the notice

Every condominium law requires a formal notice ahead of the meeting: usually 15 to 30 days, with an agenda attached. The notice needs to be delivered to every owner via a channel their by-laws recognise — historically registered mail, increasingly certified email.

Send the notice through the same tool you'll use for the meeting itself. That way you have one source of truth for who received it, when, and whether they opened it. Owners who did not receive proper notice can invalidate the meeting after the fact, so the delivery log matters.

One week before: the pre-vote

This is the biggest single upgrade over paper meetings. Open every agenda item as a poll a week before the meeting, and let owners cast their vote at any point during that week. Most will vote in the first 48 hours.

Two things happen when you do this:

• Attendance stops mattering as much. Voting is decoupled from being present at a specific time, so a Tuesday evening in October works for everyone.

• The meeting itself becomes a discussion, not a bureaucratic exercise. Owners come to argue about the items where opinions are close, not to raise their hand on the ones where they already agreed.

Quorum still needs to be met when the vote closes. But instead of counting people in a room, you're counting permillage that has actively participated in the poll — a much more inclusive measure.

The day of: the video call

Run the meeting on any video-call platform you like — the platform does not need to be specialised. What matters is that:

• The meeting is recorded (with owner consent, disclosed in the notice).

• The chair confirms quorum on-screen at the start using the live tally.

• Owners who want to change their vote after the discussion can — the poll stays open until the chair officially closes it at the end of the meeting.

• The last few minutes are dedicated to closing every poll and reading out the results, on the record.

The day after: the minutes

Digital minutes should be published within 24 hours. A good digital tool auto-generates them: agenda item, discussion summary, vote result with tally, and a signed archive of who voted what. Add a link back to the recording and to any documents referenced during the meeting.

Owners have (in most jurisdictions) a limited window to challenge the minutes. Publishing quickly starts that clock and shortens the tail of disputes.

What it costs to switch

Almost nothing. Even a mid-sized building saves the annual meeting-hall rental and printing costs within the first meeting. What it changes is attendance and legitimacy: owners who never came before now vote every time, and decisions carry the weight of a genuine majority rather than the will of the six people who showed up.

CoCollab was designed for exactly this workflow: notice, pre-vote, live tally, digital minutes. If you're running an AGM this year, start a free trial and set up your first meeting in an afternoon.