Vantaca IQ: Community Brief Metrics Explained

Your Community Brief pulls together dozens of individual figures from Vantaca, from homeowner payments collected to average response time. This article walks through each card on the report, in the order it appears, and explains what every number, percentage, and label on that card means and how Vantaca calculates it. It also identifies which parts of the report are written by AI rather than pulled directly from your association's data.

Important: Community Brief is still rolling out gradually. If a card described here does not appear on your report yet, don't worry. It may not be available to your association yet, or it may be turned off.

Not every card described in this article appears on every report. Your management company can turn individual metrics, or entire sections, on or off before finalizing a report, and some cards only appear when there is activity to show (for example, an Actions Required card for collections only appears if a collections case is actually awaiting board approval). If a card described here is missing from your report, check whether it was turned off. For instructions, see the "Editing your report" section of the "Vantaca IQ: Community Brief" article.

We are continuously refining the metrics you see in your Community Brief. Some metric definitions may be subject to change.

Contents

• This Month's Narrative
• At a Glance: Financial Health
• At a Glance: Service Activity
• What We Delivered This Month
• Actions Required
• How AI Is Used in Your Report
• Best Practices for Managers and Reviewers
• FAQ

 

This Month's Narrative

The "This Month" banner near the top of your report is a short paragraph written by AI, based on all of the figures collected for your association that period. It typically calls out the biggest financial change, any notable activity, and what still needs board attention. It is regenerated fresh each time, so the wording varies even when the underlying numbers are similar.

Before finalizing the report, you can choose a tone for this paragraph and add your own free text to guide what it says, in addition to making inline edits to the generated text.

 

At a Glance: Financial Health

These cards summarize your association's income, spending, and bank balances for the reporting period. Every number comes directly from your association's financial records in Vantaca. The short italic sentence at the bottom of a card is written by AI; everything else on the card is a figure calculated directly from your data.

Note: Financial Health and Service Activity are two labeled groups within a single At a Glance section, not two separate sections. A single on/off control turns At a Glance off, which hides both groups together. Cards within either group can still be turned on or off individually.

Homeowner Payments Collected

This card shows five related figures together:

• The percentage in the ring: The share of this period's amount due that has been credited against homeowner accounts so far (the credited amount described below, divided by the amount due). The ring's color reflects that percentage: green at 85% or above, orange between 60% and 84%, and red below 60%.
• The dollar amount: The total amount credited against homeowner accounts this period, shown next to the total amount due for that period. This includes credits and account adjustments alongside payments, not payments alone. The same figure also drives the ring percentage above and the Homeowner dues collected row in What We Delivered This Month.
• The amount due: Everything billed to homeowner accounts that period, other than deposits.
• The payment count: The number of separate homeowner payments received during the period.
• The year-to-date collected total: The same credited amount described above, totaled from the start of your association's fiscal year (not the calendar year).

Note: Collections can lag behind billing within a period, so a low percentage early in the month does not necessarily mean anything is wrong. It often just means most payments have not come in yet.

Spending vs. Plan

This card shows how actual spending compares to what was budgeted:

• The percentage, and the Under or Over label: How far actual spending was from the budgeted amount, shown as a variance percentage, for example 5.0% Under or 5.0% Over.
• The ring: Fills to show actual spending as a share of the budget, capped at a completely full ring. A month under budget shows a ring that isn't completely full; any month at or over budget shows a completely full ring, no matter how far over. The ring's color reflects the variance separately from how full it is: green under budget, orange for under 15% over budget, and red at 15% over budget or more.
• Budget vs actual: A reminder of the two figures behind the percentage: the budgeted expense amount for the period, and actual spending, meaning every expense posted to the general ledger for the period across all funds (including reserve fund expenses, not only operating), based on when the expense was recorded rather than when it was paid.
• The italic sentence: Written by AI, giving one line of context on the variance.

Operating

This card shows your operating cash balance:

• The dollar figure and Current balance: Your association's operating cash balance from your general ledger as of the end of the period. This can combine more than one bank account and does not read a bank register directly, so it will not always match a single bank statement.
• The change from the prior month: A separate calculated line, shown with an up or down arrow, above the italic sentence.
• The italic sentence: Written by AI, giving one line of context on the balance.

Reserves & Savings

This card shows your reserve and savings balance:

• The dollar figure and All accounts combined: Your association's reserve and savings balance as of the end of the period, taken from your general ledger. Whether a cash account counts as reserves or as operating follows how your association's chart of accounts is grouped, not the account type: a money market account is not automatically treated as reserves, and escrow is not systematically excluded.
• If your chart of accounts does not separate reserve cash from operating cash by group name, this card and the Operating card both show nothing.
• The change from the prior month: A separate calculated line, shown with an up or down arrow, above the italic sentence.
• The italic sentence: Written by AI, giving one line of context on the balance.

Note: If this balance ever looks lower than expected, this is the first thing worth checking with your community manager.

 

At a Glance: Service Activity

These cards summarize how much invoice work your team completed, and how homeowners reached your team, during the reporting period. Depending on what your management company has turned on and what activity occurred, you may see one, several, or none of the following cards.

Bills Reviewed & Paid

Every metric on the report starts switched on, and each new report inherits how the previous one was set up. This card is on by default and appears whenever there was bill activity during the period; your management company can turn it off.

• The number: The total number of vendor invoices logged during the period, at any stage of the workflow, with voided invoices removed.
• The paid count and amount: The number of invoices that had a disbursement during the period, and the total dollar amount disbursed to vendors for them (meaning the payment cleared the bank). This is a separate population from the logged count above, counted on a different date basis: an invoice logged in an earlier month but paid this month appears in the paid figures but not in the logged count, so the paid count can come out higher than the logged number.
• The year-to-date amount: The total dollar amount paid to vendors so far this fiscal year (not the calendar year).
• The italic sentence: Written by AI, restating the period's paid count and dollar amount, along with the number of invoices logged.

Questions & Requests

This card only shows when there is contact activity to report. When it appears, it shows:

• The number: The total number of phone calls, emails, and homeowner portal requests logged during the period.
• The subtitle: Reads "Emails, calls, and messages".
• The italic sentence: Written by AI, breaking the total down by contact type, for example how many calls, emails, and portal requests made up the total.

Vantaca counts each contact based on how it originally came in, even if it was later reclassified into a different type of request (for example, a portal request that turned out to be a work order). This keeps the total from shifting after the fact. Automated and bulk-generated items are excluded, so a mass mailing that creates one record per recipient does not count as individual homeowner contacts.

Average Response Time

This card, when it appears, shows the average time between a homeowner's contact being logged and the first reply from a management company employee, across calls, emails, and portal requests. Contacts that never received a reply are left out of the average rather than counted as long ones.

• The number: The average response time for the period, in hours.
• The subtitle: Reads "Average response time" on the web report and "Hours" on the PDF.
• The italic sentence: Written by AI, restating the average response time in a full sentence.

Notes:

• Average Response Time is calculated only across calls, emails, and portal requests. Violations, work orders, architectural requests, invoices, and collections are not included. There is no special handling for holidays or weekends.
• If an employee creates a ticket on behalf of a homeowner, that employee's own note on the ticket doesn't count as the first response. The clock starts when the ticket is created and stops at the first note logged by a different employee.

 

What We Delivered This Month

This section is a checklist of the work completed on your community's behalf during the reporting period. Each row has a title, a short italic sentence written by AI, and a summary figure. The AI sentence is generated per row, capped to one short line, and left off when there isn't enough data behind it for a meaningful sentence. Which rows appear depends on what your management company has turned on and whether there was activity in that category this period, so your report may show more or fewer rows than the examples in this article.

Financial reports delivered

• The summary figure: The date your prior month's financial package was finalized and delivered to your board.

Homeowner dues collected

• The italic sentence: Typically restates the number of payments and total dollar amount collected this period, and the total collected year-to-date.
• The summary figure: The same collection percentage and dollar amount shown on the Homeowner Payments Collected card.

Bills processed & paid

• The summary figure: The paid invoice count and dollar amount, and a fiscal year-to-date total, matching the Bills Reviewed & Paid card.

Property inspection completed

• The summary figure: The date of the first property inspection in the period, if more than one occurred. This row does not appear if no inspections occurred during the period.

Homeowner questions handled

• The summary figure: The total number of contacts logged during the period, alongside the average response time, matching the Questions & Requests and Average Response Time cards.

Community standards addressed

• The italic sentence: Typically restates the number of new violations identified during the period, and the number closed.
• The summary figure: The same two counts, identified and resolved, restated.

Note: These are two independent counts. An item is counted in the period it was most recently active in, since there is no separate closed date, so a violation counted as closed this period may have originally been opened in an earlier month, or been closed earlier and only picked up a note this month.

Home modification requests

• The italic sentence: Typically restates the number of architectural review requests logged during the period, and the number closed.
• The summary figure: The same two counts, logged and closed (or approved, depending on how your report labels it), restated.

Note: Closed reflects any request that reached a final decision, not only approvals. If your report labels this figure as approved, a closed request that was declined is still counted here.

Work orders processed

• The italic sentence: Typically restates the number of work orders opened during the period, and the number completed.
• The summary figure: The same two counts, opened and completed, restated.

Note: As with Community standards addressed, a work order is counted as completed in the period it was most recently active in, since there is no separate completion date, so one completed in an earlier month that only picks up a note this month can be counted again this month.

Board meeting

• The summary figure: The date of the first calendar event identified as a board meeting in the period, if more than one occurred. This row does not appear if no board meetings occurred during the period.

Vantaca identifies board meetings by looking for calendar events whose title, description, or event type mentions both "board" and "meeting". This reflects what was scheduled rather than what was actually attended, so a scheduled meeting that was later cancelled can still appear here.

 

Actions Required

This section shows items that currently need your board's attention. Depending on activity, you may see cards for invoices awaiting approval, home modification requests awaiting approval, violations requiring a board hearing, and collections awaiting approval. Each category's card only appears if there is at least one open item in it. Each card includes:

• A category label (for example, Board Secretary or Full Board Vote): A fixed label per category, the same on every report: Board Secretary for invoices, Full Board Vote for modification requests, Board President for violation hearings, and Board Vote for collections.
• A count and title (for example, 5 invoices awaiting approval): The number of open items in that category currently sitting on a workflow step that requires board sign-off.
• A subtitle: Restates the count in plain language.
• The italic sentence: Written by AI, calling attention to the action needed.

Important: Unlike every other section of the report, these counts reflect a real-time snapshot as of when the report was generated. They are not limited to activity within the reporting period. Which workflow steps trigger a board-approval count depends on how your association's workflows are configured, so your community manager can walk through your specific setup if a count looks off.

 

How AI Is Used in Your Report

Your Community Brief combines your association's real data with AI-written narrative to make the report easier to read. AI writes the This Month's Narrative banner, plus one short sentence on every individual metric on the report: one sentence under each Financial Health and Service Activity card, one under each row in What We Delivered This Month, and one on each Actions Required card. Each of these one-sentence summaries is capped to one short line, and is left off entirely when there isn't enough data behind it to generate a meaningful sentence, which is why a card or row sometimes has one and sometimes does not.

Everything else on the report is not AI-generated:

• Your association's name, the reporting period, and all section headers.
• Every number, percentage, and dollar figure, including the rings, dollar amounts, and counts on every card.
• Card, metric, and row titles, and the summary figures in What We Delivered This Month.
• The month-over-month change lines on the Operating and Reserves & Savings cards.
• Badges, counts, titles, and subtitles on Actions Required cards.
• Your community manager and management company contact information.

 

Best Practices for Managers and Reviewers

• The report is highly customizable. Not every metric is relevant to every association. If a metric or chart does not make sense for yours, you can turn it off.
• Take time to review the contents of your report before finalizing it. AI writes a short sentence on every metric on the report, not just a handful of cards, so review each one for accuracy. If a number or a piece of text is unclear, you can hide it in the report until you have clarity on it.
• We are continuously working to improve the Community Brief. If you have feedback about features or updates that would make the report better for your association, we would love to hear from you.

 

FAQ

Q: Can I edit the This Month's Narrative?

A: Yes. Before finalizing the report, you can choose a tone for the AI-generated summary, add your own free text to guide what it says, and make inline edits to the generated text. See the "Editing your report" section of the "Vantaca IQ: Community Brief" article for instructions.

 

Q: Can I turn off a metric or an entire section?

A: Yes. The report is highly customizable. Individual metrics and entire sections can be turned on or off before finalizing a report. See the "Editing your report" section of the "Vantaca IQ: Community Brief" article for instructions.

 

Q: Can I add a custom note to my report?

A: Yes. You can add custom notes or commentary under the "A note from Your Management Team" section. This section allows up to 1,000 characters.

 

Q: Can I change the logo or branding on my report?

A: Yes. You can upload a logo of your choice or use an existing one from Logo Management.

 

Q: Can I change the contact information at the bottom of my report?

A: Yes. You can edit or turn on/off the contact information at the bottom of the report, including your address, phone number, and email. You can also apply the email, phone, and address fields across all of your associations and future reports. The community manager name is not included in that option and is saved for that association going forward.

 

Q: Is the Community Brief available through Action Items?

A: Yes. Community Brief can now be added as a report within the Financial Delivery Action Type, either bundled with your other financial reports or as its own standalone action item. This is rolling out gradually, so it may not be available to your association yet. See the "How To Create & Edit Your Financial Delivery Action Item" article for instructions.

 

Q: A card or number on my report doesn't match what I expected. What should I check first?

A: Start with your community manager. They can walk through exactly how the figure was calculated for your association. Many mismatches come down to how a specific workflow step is configured, not an error in the number itself.

 

Q: Why isn't a card described in this article showing on my report?

A: A few reasons: your management company may have turned off that metric or section, there may not have been any activity in that category this period (Actions Required cards and some Service Activity cards only appear when there is something to show), the card had no value behind it to show, or the feature may still be rolling out to your association. See the "Editing your report" section of the "Vantaca IQ: Community Brief" article to check what's turned on.

 

Q: Does every Community Brief show the same cards in the same order?

A: The order and grouping stay consistent, but which cards appear depends on what your management company has turned on and what activity occurred that period.

 

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