Everyone sells you what the desk does. This is where it stops.
The desk sits inside The Foundation and answers when you cannot, on the web or on your phone line. The question every owner is too polite to ask is what happens when it answers something it had no business answering. Here is the answer, in advance, on a page you can forward to your partner, your board or your lawyer without asking me for it. Nothing on this list moves later because the relationship has warmed up.
What the desk does
Where it stops, every time
One desk, and the edges move with the trade.
The desk performs administrative intake in every trade I build for. What changes is which judgement is reserved to a licensed or qualified person, and each one is configured as a hard escalation rather than a judgement call.
Property & condominium management
Administrative intake only. It never interprets a declaration, never rules common element versus unit, never authorises an expenditure, never puts dates on statutory processes, never touches another owner’s file, and never performs a function reserved to a licensed manager.
Auto service & collision
It never quotes a repair, never estimates a job, never states or implies whether damage is covered by a policy, never contacts an insurer or an adjuster, never discusses, absorbs, rebates or waives a deductible, and never commits your shop to a completion date or a loaner you have not authorised. It never tells a driver a vehicle is safe to drive.
Auto parts & recyclers
It never confirms a part is in stock unless your own system says so, never quotes a price you have not published, never states that a part will fit a vehicle it has not been matched to, never promises a delivery date, and never represents a used or aftermarket part as new or as carrying a warranty you have not set.
Trades and home services
It never quotes a price, never estimates a job, never commits a crew to a date or an attendance window you have not authorised, never states or implies whether damage is covered by insurance, and never touches a deductible. Where a trade is licensed, it routes to the licensed person and stops rather than performing any part of the reserved function.
Where a jurisdiction does not license management, the same routing applies anyway. The limit is not there because a regulator is watching - it is there because an intake desk making judgement calls about a declaration is a liability wearing the costume of a convenience.
A limit you discover afterwards is not a limit.
I spent close to a decade in the justice system, and the lesson that transferred most cleanly is that the account of what happened matters more than what happened. A desk that quietly exceeded its remit at eleven on a Tuesday does not look like a small administrative drift once somebody is reading the log back to a board. So the remit gets published, the contacts get timestamped, and both of those exist before you need them rather than after.
The ones worth asking.
Why publish this at all? +
Does the desk ever give a resident an answer about their own unit? +
What happens when somebody calls with a real emergency? +
Is this different in the United States? +
What if I want the desk to do more than this? +
Read the limits. Now ask me the hard one.
Nine minutes. Bring the scenario you are actually worried about - the resident who calls three times, the board that wants to know who knew what - and I will tell you exactly what the desk would have done and what it would have refused to do.
or call 647-242-5800