Finance & Levies

Schedule B Fees: The Silent Budget Killer in Australian Strata

How 'additional service' charges quietly drain your building's funds, and seven things your committee can do to take back control.

4 March 2026 · 7 min read

On this pageAcross Australia

Across Australia

Schedule B is a familiar label in many SCA-style agreements, but the risk is broader than one schedule. NSW, Victoria, Queensland, WA, SA, Tasmania, ACT and NT buildings should all check what work is included in the base management fee and what is billed separately.

If your state or manager uses different labels, look for the same substance: hourly charges, per-lot disbursements, meeting attendance, certificates, debt recovery, insurance claim handling and compliance administration.

The practical read

Schedule B is where small administrative actions can become a second management fee.
The danger is not one charge; it is repeated low-friction billing that no one reviews.
Committees should cap, approve, and report these charges before they compound.

Schedule B is not always a scam. It becomes a problem when the committee cannot see the work, approve the work, or compare the cost.

If the building's management costs keep rising while the base fee stays the same, check Schedule B.

These additional-service fees sit on top of the agreed management fee for work outside the standard scope. Repeated charges can push the administrative fund well beyond budget.

What gets charged under Schedule B?

Schedule B varies between strata management companies, but these charges appear frequently:

Schedule B Item	Typical Fee Range
Extra committee meeting attendance	$200 – $500 per meeting
EGM preparation and attendance	$500 – $1,500
Insurance claim management	$180 – $280/hour
By-law breach correspondence	$150 – $250 per matter
Debt recovery (per lot in arrears)	$150 – $300+ per lot
Obtaining maintenance quotes	$60 – $150 per quote
NCAT/Tribunal application	$500 – $2,000+
Strata Hub annual reporting (NSW)	$100 – $400
Section 184 certificate preparation	$100 – $350
After-hours emergency call-out	$250 – $500+
Managing contractor compliance	$100 – $200 per contractor
Coordinating major works / defects	$180 – $280/hour

The individual fees can look minor. Across 12 months, especially in an older building with active maintenance needs, they can total $4,000 to $10,000+ outside the headline management fee.

Why Schedule B charges blow out

The perverse incentive

Schedule B can create a misaligned incentive. A narrow base agreement under Schedule F leaves more work to be charged separately. Some managers quote a low base fee and recover the difference through Schedule B billing.

Charges often spike during defect claims, major maintenance programs, by-law disputes or committee turnover, when the building needs more management work.

The billing increment trap

Another common issue is the billing increment. Many contracts specify Schedule B work is charged in 15-minute or 6-minute increments. A quick five-minute phone call can be billed as a full 15-minute block at $70. A two-minute email response gets rounded up to six minutes at $28.

Dozens of small billing increments add up over a year and are difficult to audit later.

No approval required

Unless your contract specifically requires it, most strata managers can perform Schedule B work and bill for it without seeking committee approval first. You may not even see the charges until they appear as line items in the quarterly financial report, by which point the money has already been spent from your admin fund.

Schedule B is the most extreme example of a wider problem in Australian strata finance: the costs that aren't in the headline budget but show up in the actual bills, quarter after quarter, until someone in the committee finally asks for the breakdown.

A worked Schedule B example

Consider a typical 60-lot building in Sydney with a base management fee of $18,000 per year. This is what a year of Schedule B charges might look like:

Activity	Hours/Events	Rate	Annual Cost
3 extra committee meetings	3 × 2hrs	$250/hr	$1,500
1 EGM (by-law amendment)	Flat fee	n/a	$1,200
Insurance claim (water damage)	4 hours	$250/hr	$1,000
2 by-law breach matters	2 × flat fee	$200 each	$400
3 lots in levy arrears	3 × flat fee	$250 each	$750
8 maintenance quotes obtained	8 × flat fee	$100 each	$800
Strata Hub reporting	1.5 hours	$250/hr	$375
Section 184 certificates × 4	4 × flat fee	$150 each	$600
Total Schedule B			$6,625

The $18,000 management fee becomes $24,625, a 37% increase. Committee meetings, levy arrears, maintenance quotes and an occasional insurance claim are ordinary activity for a building of this size.

The all-inclusive alternative

An all-inclusive management contract removes Schedule B charges. The base fee is higher, but it covers all of the manager's work and makes the annual cost predictable.

The right model depends on your building's activity level:

Building Profile	Better Contract Model
Quiet, well-maintained, few issues	Lower base fee + Schedule B (activity is low)
Active committee, regular maintenance	All-inclusive (Schedule B would add up fast)
Older building, defects, frequent claims	All-inclusive (you'll save significantly)
Large building (100+ lots)	All-inclusive (per-lot disbursements also compound)

Newer Schedule B charges

As regulatory requirements evolve, new charges are appearing in Schedule B that didn't exist a few years ago.

Strata Hub reporting (NSW)

Strata Hub is the annual data submission to NSW Fair Trading that became mandatory under the Strata Schemes Management Amendment (Information) Regulation 2021. Many managers charge for it as a Schedule B item, billing one to two hours at the senior manager's hourly rate.

For some buildings this means paying $200–$500 per year just for regulatory reporting. Industry commentators have argued this work should be part of a manager's core duties and incorporated into base management fees at contract renewal, rather than charged at premium hourly rates.

NSW Fair Trading also charges $3 per lot directly to the scheme for the Strata Hub platform, separate from the manager's data-entry fee.

Insurance disclosure compliance

The Strata Managing Agents Legislation Amendment Act 2024 (NSW) created disclosure requirements around commissions and financial remuneration. Some managers bill the additional administrative work under Schedule B.

Contractor compliance checks

Increasingly, strata managers are charging to verify that contractors hold current ABNs, appropriate licences, and adequate insurance before they work on common property. While this is a sensible compliance step, some committee members have questioned whether a basic ABN check justifies a $150–$200 charge.

Read Schedule B in the contract
List every billable activity
Convert rates to per-hour
Set approval thresholds with manager
Track quarterly against budget
Review at renewal or retender

A contract-literacy checklist for keeping Schedule B charges visible and predictable.

Seven ways to control Schedule B costs

1. Require written approval

Insert a clause in your contract requiring the strata manager to obtain written committee approval before performing any Schedule B work. This prevents billing for work that was never authorised.

2. Set a dollar threshold

Agree that any single Schedule B charge over a set amount (say $300) requires committee pre-approval. This allows small administrative tasks to proceed without delay while flagging significant costs before they're incurred.

3. Convert rates to per-hour for comparison

Schedule B fees are often presented in 6-minute, 15-minute, or 30-minute increments. Convert everything to an hourly rate so you can compare providers on a like-for-like basis. A rate quoted as "$70 per 15-minute unit" is actually $280/hour.

4. Negotiate key items into Schedule F

If your building regularly needs certain services (like maintenance quote coordination or insurance claim management) negotiate to include them in the base agreement rather than leaving them as Schedule B extras. This shifts the cost risk to the manager and gives you budget certainty.

5. Request quarterly Schedule B reporting

Ask your strata manager to provide a detailed Schedule B summary each quarter, showing every charge, the time spent, and the outcome. This creates accountability and lets you spot patterns of over-billing before they compound.

6. Use committee members' skills

If you have committee members with relevant expertise (accounting, legal, project management) they can handle certain tasks directly instead of paying the strata manager's hourly rate. A committee member who coordinates maintenance quotes saves the building $100+ per quote.

7. Retender before contract expiry

Always retender your strata management near the end of the current contract. This ensures your manager can't increase fees unreasonably, knowing you'll simply roll over. The tendering process itself often reveals how competitive (or not) your current arrangement really is.

The practical point

Schedule B isn't inherently bad. Some buildings genuinely don't need many additional services, and paying per-use is more efficient than a bloated base fee. The problem arises when:

The base agreement is deliberately narrow to generate Schedule B revenue
Charges are billed without committee approval
Billing increments inflate the true time spent
New regulatory requirements get charged at premium rates
Owners never see the total Schedule B spend in one place

Read the contract, require approval where appropriate and total the charges each quarter. The committee should be able to explain what the manager billed and what work was delivered.

Track the pattern, not only the invoice

UnitBuddy can track management costs against the budget and comparable buildings. That makes Schedule B easier to discuss at committee level because the question becomes factual: what was charged, how often, who approved it, and whether the same work should be folded into the base agreement next time.