The Grid

Category: App

  • Submit Quotation: How v2.5 Gets a Quote From Vendor to Work Order Without the Chasing

    Basementgrid v2.5

    Basementgrid v2.5 is out, and the main new feature is Submit Quotation. Vendors can now send their quote straight into the work order, and the approval that follows runs on its own. Please update your app to try it.

    First, a look at how a quotation usually works, because it explains why we built this.

    How it works today

    The vendor sends a quotation by email or WhatsApp. The BM can’t just forward it to the council, because nobody knows what it’s for. So he writes the background first: what broke, why this vendor, why this price. Then it goes to the council members for approval, and he waits for a majority to reply.

    When the work is done, he scans the vendor’s job sheet. He then sends the quotation, the job sheet and a screenshot or email of the council’s approval to the accountant, who creates the payment. After that the whole pile goes to the two approvers, usually the Treasurer and the Secretary, who approve the payment in the bank app.

    Every step is a forward, and every forward can sit in someone’s inbox for a week. When someone asks where it’s stuck, nobody can say.

    We had already turned most of this into a work order link, with timestamps and comments recorded in the app. In v2.5 the quotation itself moves into the work order too.

    What’s new in v2.5: Submit Quotation

    work order approval workflow

    The vendor now submits the quote directly in Basementgrid, with the amount entered in the system. The BM reviews it and taps Accept. If the amount is under the approval threshold, the work order goes out to the vendor straight away.

    If the amount is above the threshold, Basementgrid sends it to the council members for authorisation. The work order is only issued once the minimum number of approvals is met. The BM doesn’t forward anything or write a summary. The moment the council approves, the vendor gets the work order and can dispatch a technician.

    When council members don’t respond

    Most delays aren’t rejections. Someone just hasn’t got round to it. So Basementgrid follows up for you:

    • After 24 hours, it reminds the council members who haven’t approved.
    • After 48 hours, it reminds them again.
    • After 72 hours, it escalates to the BM.

    When the council says no

    The BM is told immediately. From there he has three options: ask the same vendor for a new quote, switch to another vendor, or enter the price himself and issue the work order. Nothing waits on a reply, and the activity log shows exactly where the job is stalled and with whom.

    After the approval: the rest of the job stays in the same work order

    Once the work order is issued, the vendor’s technician clocks in at the site, does the job and submits proof of work, including photos taken on the spot. The BM reviews it, and the vendor submits the invoice against the same work order. The approvers then pay using the PayNow QR code, which carries the invoice amount and the vendor’s UEN, and the payment is marked as paid. Nobody scans a job sheet or forwards a pile of documents to the accountant, because the quotation, approvals, proof of work and invoice are already in one place with their timestamps.

    Old way vs Basementgrid

    • The quote: It used to sit in an email or WhatsApp chat. Now the vendor enters the amount in the work order.
    • The background: The BM used to write the story behind the quote himself. Now the work order carries it, so there’s nothing to write up.
    • Approval: The BM used to forward the quote and chase council members one by one. Now Basementgrid sends it, reminds them at 24 and 48 hours, and escalates to the BM at 72 hours.
    • Records: There used to be a pile of scans, screenshots and forwarded emails. Now the quotation, approvals, proof of work and invoice sit in one work order with timestamps.
    • When it stalls: Nobody could say where it was stuck. Now the activity log shows exactly where.

    What’s next: creating a work order from a photo

    We’re not stopping at quotations. The next version uses AI to make creating a work order much faster.

    The BM takes a photo of the fault. The AI looks at it and suggests the title, the location and the asset for the work order. The BM checks the suggestions, fixes anything that’s off, and confirms. The work order is created and assigned to the vendor linked to that asset.

    Today, creating a work order means typing a title, picking a location, finding the asset and choosing a vendor. For a BM walking the estate with a dozen things to log, that adds up. With the photo, most of the form is filled in before he starts typing. The BM still has the final say, because every suggestion can be edited before the work order is issued.

    Update to v2.5

    Submit Quotation only works if the people on both sides of the quote are on the latest version. Building managers, council members and approvers, please update your app. Vendors, please update too, so you can submit your next quote directly in the work order.

    You can update from the App Store or Google Play, or get the app here: https://bgr.one/bxK80umibBb

    Fix the process, not the people.

  • Your MA Recommends the Work, Does the Work, and Signs It Off. Who Checks?

    Your MA Recommends the Work, Does the Work, and Signs It Off. Who Checks?

    Have you heard of the principal-agent problem? It shows up whenever one person hires another to act for them, and the two don’t want exactly the same thing. The agent usually knows more than the principal and can’t be watched all the time, so the agent’s choices end up suiting the agent a little more than the principal. In an MCST, the council is the principal and the managing agent is the agent, which makes MCST managing agent oversight harder than it looks.

    The MA advises and executes the work

    In most professions, the person who recommends what to do is not the person who does it. You hire an architect to design and a contractor to build. You hire a consultant to recommend and someone else to implement.

    In an MCST, the MA does both. It tells the council what needs fixing, which vendor to use, how much it should cost, and when to do it. Then it runs the job, checks the work, and processes the payment. Planning and execution sit with the same organisation, so nobody is positioned to ask “did we really need to do this, and was it done properly?”

    When the same party writes the brief, delivers the work and signs it off, the council ends up reviewing a conclusion rather than an analysis.

    MA fees don’t reward the best advice

    Consulting firms charge well because they are paid for the quality of the advice. MA fees in Singapore are not set up that way. The work is operational and the fees are modest. Where there is a year-end bonus or a performance target, it is usually tied to keeping the account, not to whether the estate is better off.

    So the advice that is easiest and safest for the MA often differs from the advice that is best for the estate. Sticking with the familiar vendor avoids friction. Recommending the bigger job can be easier than defending a smaller one. Not raising an awkward issue keeps the relationship smooth. None of this requires anyone to act in bad faith. People respond to the incentives in front of them, and the council would do the same in their shoes.

    MCST council members are volunteers with little at stake

    A company’s board has a reason to care. Directors are paid, hold shares, or have a reputation riding on the outcome. Even in charities and religious organisations, volunteers get something back, whether it’s a sense of purpose, a community, or a cause they believe in.

    MCST council members mostly get none of this. There’s no pay and no equity. Whether the estate is run well or badly is rarely felt personally, beyond the usual annoyances every resident has. Most are busy people who took the role because someone had to. It’s not realistic to expect volunteers like this to dig into quotations, chase defects, and cross-check invoices on top of their day jobs.

    So the principal who is supposed to keep the agent honest has the least time, the least information and the least reason to do it. That is the dilemma.

    What actually helps: independent MCST council oversight

    We don’t think the answer is replacing the MA or asking council members to try harder. People change MAs all the time and the same problems tend to follow. Our view is to fix the process, not the people.

    The idea is simple: give the council an independent record of what’s happening, one that doesn’t depend on the MA telling them. Information is power, and right now most of it sits on one side of the table.

    Basementgrid acts as that independent layer, an operating system for the estate that sits alongside whoever the current MA is. Around 70% of an MA’s work is day-to-day maintenance coordination, which we’ve written about here. That work runs through the app:

    • Every job has a record. A work order is raised, assigned to a vendor, and tracked through each status, so the council can see what’s happening without asking.
    • Spending above the council’s threshold needs approval inside the app. No more “I thought you approved it” and “I thought you knew” after the fact.
    • Vendors submit quotes and invoices in the system. The amounts and documents are on file, and the invoice is matched against the approved work order.
    • Proof of work comes first. Vendors clock in with GPS verification and submit photos and a completion record before the job can be reviewed and paid.
    • The history stays with the estate. If the MA changes, the records don’t leave with them.

    The MA still does its job, and that part is light: creating work orders and verifying completed work in the app. What changes is that the work now leaves a trail the council can see. Council members don’t have to review every job. They just have to know that the information is there when they want it, and that approvals actually passed through them.

    That’s the part that closes the gap. The MA can still advise and execute, but it no longer does so in a way the council can’t see. The volunteers don’t have to become experts, because the process does the watching.

    If you’re on an MCST council and want to see how it works, you can set up a workspace in about 3 minutes and run a first work order with your existing vendor. Book a 15-minute demo or check the help centre.

    FAQs

    What is the principal-agent problem in an MCST? It’s the gap between what the council wants and what the managing agent has an incentive to do, made worse because the MA both advises and executes.

    How can an MCST council oversee its managing agent? By keeping an independent record of work orders, quotes, approvals and proof of work, so the council doesn’t depend on the MA to report what happened.

    Do we need to change our MA to fix this? Usually not. Changing agents tends to carry the same problems over unless the process itself changes.

  • Set Up in 3 Minutes, Paid in One Workflow: Running Your First Work Order on Basementgrid

    Set Up in 3 Minutes, Paid in One Workflow: Running Your First Work Order on Basementgrid

    Most software for building maintenance asks you to change how you work before it does anything for you. You import data, configure modules, train the team, and three months later you’re still not sure it’s running.

    Basementgrid works the other way. You can start with the vendor you already use, on the next job that comes up. Here’s what that looks like, from setting up your workspace to getting the vendor paid.

    Step 1: Set up your workspace (about 3 minutes)

    Basementgrid New Workspace Onboarding

    A building manager or a council member can create the workspace. You enter the estate details and set the approval threshold, which is the amount above which a work order needs council sign-off. Then you invite the council members.

    That’s the whole setup. You don’t need to load your assets or build your vendor list first. You can add those as you go.

    Step 2: Create your first work order

    Create a work order for whatever needs doing, invite your existing vendor, and assign the job to them. Your vendor doesn’t need to be on Basementgrid already, and they don’t pay to use it.

    If the amount is above your threshold, the work order waits for council approval. Council members get the request, see the amount and the vendor, and approve it. Nobody has to chase anyone on WhatsApp to find out whether the job was authorised.

    Step 3: The vendor dispatches a technician

    Once the work order is issued, the vendor manager invites their technician and dispatches them to the job. The vendor runs their own side, so the building manager doesn’t have to coordinate who is turning up.

    Step 4: The technician does the job, and proves it

    GPS-verification check in

    When the technician arrives on site, they clock in with GPS verification. They do the work, take photos that are also GPS verified, write a work summary, and submit the form.

    The photos have to be taken on the spot, so you’re not relying on a picture sent later that could be from anywhere. The building manager gets a record of who was there, when, and what they did, without having to be on site.

    Step 5: Accept the job

    After the technician submits, the building manager reviews the work and accepts it. The invoice comes only after that, so you’re never paying for something you haven’t checked.

    Step 6: Invoice and payment

    QR code payment is tagged to approved work order amount and vendor UEN

    Once the job is accepted, the vendor manager submits the invoice. Basementgrid generates a PayNow QR code for it.

    Whoever makes payments for the MCST account can use that QR code to create the payment record in the bank, and then approve it. The second approver approves it after that. Most MCSTs need two approvers, and the process fits that. The QR code just means nobody is retyping the vendor’s details or the amount.

    The work order stays on file

    When the work order is completed, it’s filed and tagged to the asset it was for, whether that’s a lift, a pump or a fire panel. The building manager and council members can go back to it later.

    That matters when the council starts asking whether to keep repairing something or replace it. Instead of relying on someone’s memory or a box of old invoices, you can pull up every job done on that asset, what each one cost and who did it. It also stays with the estate when the managing agent or building manager changes.

    Why this counts as plug and play

    You didn’t migrate anything. You didn’t wait for an implementation. You set up a workspace, created a work order, invited the vendor you already work with, and ran one real job through the whole process, from approval to payment to filing.

    Want more control?

    If you want something more customised, such as a form the vendor has to complete before a job can be closed, you can set that up. The guides are at help.basementgrid.com.

    If you’d like someone to walk you through it first, you can book a 15-minute demo.

  • Running Your Own Building’s Maintenance Without Losing Your Mind

    Running Your Own Building’s Maintenance Without Losing Your Mind

    If you own a landed home or a shophouse, you don’t have an MCST or a managing agent handling maintenance for you. You are the managing agent. Every leaking pipe, every aircon servicing, every contractor who shows up at your gate — you’re the one coordinating it, remembering it, and paying for it.

    Most owners end up doing this through a mix of WhatsApp chats, paper receipts, and memory. It works, until it doesn’t — usually right when you need to remember something from two years ago and can’t.

    Here’s how Basementgrid helps, even without a council or an MA in the picture.

    Verified Contractor App Singapore: Know Who’s Actually in Your Building

    Verified Contractor

    Anyone can call themselves a contractor. Basementgrid only lets UEN-verified vendors take on jobs, so before someone’s doing electrical work or roof repairs on your property, there’s a real registered company behind them, not just a phone number a neighbour passed along.

    Every job also gets logged against that vendor. If the same “handyman” keeps quoting differently each time, or a company’s work keeps failing, you’ll actually be able to see that pattern instead of relying on your own memory of who did what.

    Shophouse Maintenance Tracking: Stop Paying for Work That Quietly Didn’t Happen

    This is the part most self-managing owners get burned by eventually. You pay a vendor for a “routine service” or a repair, and there’s no real way to confirm the work was done properly — or at all — beyond taking their word for it. We’ve written before about how ghost maintenance and falsified invoicing quietly drain maintenance budgets, and it’s just as easy to fall victim to without a council watching over the books.

    With Basementgrid, every job is tied to a work order and a sign-off, so there’s a record that matches the invoice to the actual work. It’s a lot harder for a vendor to bill you for a job that was rushed, skipped, or never fully completed when there’s a paper trail expected on both ends.

    Property Maintenance History Record: Build the Repair-or-Replace Case for Yourself

    Property Maintenance History Record

    This is the one that pays off years later. When your water heater fails, or your roof starts leaking, or your aircon compressor needs replacing — should you repair it again or finally replace it? That decision is so much easier when you can actually see how many times it’s been serviced, by whom, and how much you’ve already sunk into keeping it alive.

    Instead of digging through old texts and hoping you kept the invoice, your property’s full maintenance history lives in one place, tied to the property itself, not to your phone or your memory.

    DIY Building Maintenance Software: Why This Matters More for You Than a Condo Owner

    A condo owner has a council and an MA between them and the mess. You don’t. If you don’t build the system yourself, nobody’s going to build it for you — and the cost of not having one shows up later, as an asset you replaced too early, a vendor who overcharged you three times before you noticed, or a repair history you can’t produce when you’re selling the place.

    Basementgrid isn’t asking you to run a big operation. It’s just making sure that when you’re the one handling maintenance, you’re not doing it from memory.

    If you want to see how it’d work for your property, book a 15-minute demo and we’ll walk through it.

  • Digitalization of MCST Management: How Basementgrid’s 5 Roles Help

    Digitalization of MCST Management: How Basementgrid’s 5 Roles Help

    We looked at over 100 MCSTs in Singapore, and one thing kept showing up: the way a maintenance platform defines its roles decides whether the platform actually gets used. Most CMMS tools get this wrong for strata settings, and the gap shows up as unclosed work orders, unpaid vendors, and eventually a return to pen and paper.

    Here’s what we found, and how we built Basementgrid’s role structure around it.

    Why Digitalization of MCST Management Needs More Than a Typical CMMS

    In a normal maintenance department, or a company whose business is maintenance, the role structure is simple. An admin has full access to work orders and assets. He creates a work order and assigns it to a teammate, who has limited access. The teammate does the fix, or calls in a contractor, records proof of work, and closes the case.

    Budget approval sits outside the CMMS entirely. It happens in accounting software, where a director signs off once the amount crosses a threshold. Anything under that threshold gets done first, the vendor invoices after, and the manager submits it to accounting for payment.

    The CMMS itself just tracks asset failure history. An internal technician records completion and closes the case.

    This works because there’s always an internal technician in the loop. That assumption breaks down completely in a strata setting.

    Ghost Maintenance: The Barrier to Digitalization of MCST Management

    About half of Singapore’s MCSTs have fewer than 50 units. That means one managing agent, often juggling several other estates at the same time, running the whole show. There’s no budget to hire a technician to accompany every contractor and log the work.

    That’s how ghost maintenance happens: work gets done, but nobody records it in a system the MCST can actually trust.

    It gets worse when the CMMS itself is the obstacle. A contractor already juggling different CMMS tools across multiple estates isn’t going to climb a steep learning curve for one client. Work orders stay open, or never get logged at all. Eventually the MCST gives up on the software and the building manager, especially one trained the old-school way, goes back to pen and paper.

    Handing the vendor a “limited user” role and expecting diligent record-keeping doesn’t solve this. It just moves the failure point.

    More people are involved in an MCST repair than in a typical in-house maintenance job: admin, council, vendor manager, technician, accountant. More people means more places for a step to get skipped. Without a system that automates the handoffs between them, things fall through the cracks, and when they do, the blame lands on the building manager, whether or not the failure was actually his.

    Basementgrid’s 5 Roles: The Framework for Digitalization of MCST Management

    Digitalization of MCST Management

    Basementgrid’s role structure starts from a different assumption: every role has exactly one job to do at each stage of the maintenance cycle, and the process itself enforces compliance. No role in Basementgrid is ever asked to do more than two primary actions across the whole process. Simple, clear, and easy to follow, even for a first-time user.

    1. Admin (usually the building manager) Creates the work order and tracks its status. Can extend the role to an in-house technician if the MCST has one, or keep it limited to himself. No work order issued means no vendor gets paid, which is what keeps every job logged, especially the ones tied to payment.

    2. Approver (usually council members) Gets notified once a work order crosses the amount threshold and votes for or against it. For a closer look at how threshold-based approval works, see our guide on the MCST maintenance approval process.

    3. Vendor Manager Receives the approved work order and assigns a Vendor Technician to it.

    4. Vendor Technician Travels to site, clocks in on arrival, and completes the job, including GPS-verified photos and any custom form fields required for that job type.

    5. Admin verifies, Vendor Manager invoices, Approver reconciles Admin checks and verifies the completed work. Vendor Manager submits the invoice to the MCST for payment. Once payment is made offline, the Approver (usually an accountant) logs the payment and closes the loop.

    RolePrimary Action
    AdminIssues the work order, verifies completed work
    Approver (Council)Approve or reject above-threshold work
    Vendor ManagerAssigns technician, submits invoice
    Vendor TechnicianClocks in, completes the job with proof of work
    Approver (Accountant)Logs payment

    Why a Longer Process Delivers Real Digitalization of MCST Management

    This process has more steps than a typical CMMS. That’s deliberate. Every role is accountable for one action, and every action is designed to be simple enough that if you know how to use WhatsApp, you can use Basementgrid.

    The result: work that needs doing gets logged, work that’s completed gets verified with proof, and payment gets reconciled against actual work done. No ghost maintenance, no vendor chasing payment nobody agreed to, no manager stuck re-explaining a CMMS to a contractor who’s already juggling three others.

    That’s the difference between a maintenance tool built for internal teams and one built for how MCSTs actually operate.

    For a full breakdown of how each role works inside the platform, see our help center guide: Understanding Roles: Administrator, Collaborator, and Requester.

  • The iCondo Lesson: Why Operations Software Fails Where Community Apps Succeed

    The iCondo Lesson: Why Operations Software Fails Where Community Apps Succeed

    Singapore has spent years pushing the built environment towards digitalisation. The government’s Smart Nation initiative champions drones, sensors, and automation to make city infrastructure more efficient, and BCA’s Integrated Digital Delivery (IDD) programme pushes the same digital-first thinking across the building lifecycle, from design through to asset management. On paper, MCSTs today have no shortage of CMMS options to choose from.

    And yet adoption is close to zero. Ask most council members or building managers, and their CMMS either sits unused after the first few months, or never got past the pilot stage. The only category of app that has genuinely caught on with residents is community-focused apps like iCondo — and those have nothing to do with actually running the estate’s operations. They handle bookings and announcements, not maintenance, vendors, or compliance.

    That gap between “software exists” and “software gets used” isn’t a technology problem. It’s a design problem. Here’s how MCSTs actually work. When council members engage a managing agent, and if the budget allows, they’ll want someone onsite to attend to occupants directly. So they add headcount — anywhere from just a building manager, to an admin staff and a technician (handyman). How much they can add usually comes down to the maintenance funds contributed by subsidiary proprietors (SPs). Bigger estates, bigger budgets, more headcount.

    But the heavy, important work — a lift breakdown, a leaking rooftop — is done by vendors. So the MA’s real job is managing these vendors professionally and promptly. And this is where most CMMS implementations fall apart.

    Problem 1: CMMS is built for internal staff, not vendors — even for MAs like Smart Property

    When an MA implements a CMMS, vendors often don’t follow it. Most of these systems aren’t mobile-first, and they’re designed with internal staff in mind — which means they ask for more information than a vendor technician actually needs or wants to fill in. The learning curve is too steep for vendor technicians and vendor managers, and that’s usually where CMMS adoption quietly fails.

    How Basementgrid solves this: We split vendor managers and vendor technicians into two distinct roles, each with only what they need to do — and a single primary action button that tells them exactly what’s required next. Basementgrid also works as field service management software for vendor managers themselves. They carry one verified profile across every estate they work in, so they’re not learning a new system each time — just repeating the same procedure somewhere else. Mobile-first, role-specific, and structured so no one can skip a step in the maintenance process.

    Problem 2: Building managers have no leverage over vendors

    BMs usually start out enthusiastic when a CMMS is launched. But when vendors don’t cooperate, that enthusiasm fades fast, and the software gets abandoned — a pattern we’ve written about before in why building managers can’t put maintenance on autopilot. The real issue is leverage: BMs don’t have much power over vendors, because the supply of vendors willing to do the work at a reasonable price is limited. Unlike a large corporation dealing with vendors, the balance of power here tilts toward the vendor, not the buyer.

    How Basementgrid solves this: We built payments directly into the maintenance process. Invoices are submitted through Basementgrid as part of the workflow, not handed off to a separate finance process. This does two things. First, it gives vendor managers a reason to follow the procedures we require, because completing them is the path to getting paid. Second, it gives building managers instant visibility into payment status. The two departments stop working in silos — and for the MAs who outsource accounting (about half of them do), everyone knows immediately whether a job has been invoiced, paid, or stuck.

    Problem 3: Council members are more than “requestors”

    Most CMMS platforms are built for the building management team and technicians, which means council members are treated as just another requestor in the system. But that undersells their role. The maintenance health of the estate, and its statutory compliance, ultimately rests on their shoulders — even when an MA is engaged. They can’t hand off responsibility entirely if a vendor, MA, or technician drops the ball. The same goes for the funds they’re accountable for, whether management funds or sinking funds.

    How Basementgrid solves this: We keep it simple. Council members only need to give majority approval when maintenance or repair costs exceed a set threshold, and they have view access to all work orders at all times. If they want an overview of the estate, they can generate reports — but it’s optional, not mandatory. We call this role “Approver,” and it does double duty: it also keeps building managers accountable, since they know council members can see what’s happening in the estate at any time.

    Try it for yourself

    To be clear, Basementgrid isn’t trying to replace iCondo, and it doesn’t need to. iCondo does community well — bookings, announcements, keeping residents in the loop. We do operations — maintenance, vendors, payments, compliance. Different jobs, different users, and there’s no reason an estate can’t run both side by side. The problem was never that community apps exist. It’s that operations software never solved the vendor problem, so it never got the chance to matter the way iCondo did.

    Whether you’re a council member, a managing agent, or a subsidiary proprietor who owns just a small fraction of the estate, you can download the app here and reach out if you need a hand getting started.

    We’re always happy to partner with managing agents looking to integrate Basementgrid into their operations, help council members set it up and customise it for their estate, or support onboarding for building managers and vendors. It’s the same spirit behind Savills’ partnership with iCondo on the community side — we’d like to be that partner for MAs on the operations side.

    Because at the end of the day, if the process is broken, changing the people running it won’t fix anything.