Tendering: the two thresholds your meeting may have forgotten to vote

Two resolutions, voted once, decide everything the manager may commit without asking you, for years.

A board discovers a four-thousand-euro replacement invoice it never saw coming. It protests, the manager answers that they were within their rights — and they are, if the meeting never set the thresholds that obliged them to consult.

Those thresholds are probably the two most underestimated resolutions of the general meeting.

Two distinct thresholds, not one

The meeting sets two amounts, with different purposes and different effects.

• The consultation threshold: the amount above which the manager must seek the board’s opinion before committing a spend.
• The tendering threshold: the amount above which several quotes become compulsory for works and contracts, excluding the management contract.

Many meetings vote only one, or conflate them. The first protects your oversight; the second protects the building’s money. You need both.

They are permanent: good news and bad

Once voted, those amounts stay in force until a later meeting changes them. There is no need to re-vote them yearly — but a threshold set twelve years ago still applies to today’s prices.

That is the usual situation: an old threshold, never updated, now either far too low (everything comes to the board, which drowns) or far too high (nothing does).

What amount to set

No text prescribes it: it is a judgement call for each building, which is precisely why the board should prepare it.

• Too low, the consultation threshold paralyses: the manager waits for an opinion on a lock, and the board follows nothing.
• Too high, it becomes decorative: most spending falls below it.
• The right benchmark is the annual budget: an amount that catches unusual spending without catching routine maintenance.
• The tendering threshold can sit higher than the consultation one — three quotes cost everyone time.

See questions to ask on the budget to calibrate from the past year’s actual spending.

What happens when nothing was voted

Absent conditions set by the meeting, tendering simply means requesting several quotes, or putting one specification to several firms. The principle survives, but its trigger is no longer framed.

The consultation threshold has no default equivalent: with no vote, the board has no right to be consulted before routine spending is committed.

One threshold voted beats ten arguments after the invoice.

What “tendering” actually means

Three quotes for form’s sake, from firms that never visited, are not a tender: they are three prices for three different jobs, incomparable with each other.

Comparison requires one specification put to several firms. That is the work the board is best placed to demand. See comparing quotes and the quote request template.

The management contract stands apart

It follows its own rules and does not fall under the threshold voted for other contracts. See the management contract and changing manager.

The resolution to table this year

If you do not know what your thresholds are, the answer sits in an old set of minutes — and that search is itself the best argument for re-voting them. Table two distinct, costed resolutions.

See getting an item on the agenda and the agenda template.

Track commitments with CoproHarmony

CoproHarmony keeps quotes, opinions given and decisions in one place: checking that a threshold was respected no longer means reconstructing history. Create your free space.