Second Signer
For California HOA & condo boards
The second set of eyes on your association's money.
California law requires your board to review the association's finances every month (Civil Code §5500). Second Signer reads the monthly financial packet and bank statements for you, flags anything unusual, and gives your board a short summary that's easy to understand.
Launching soon. Sign up now and we'll email you as soon as your board can start.
- Independent of your management company
- Your documents are never shared
- First month free, no card needed
The problem
The 50-page packet nobody has time to read
Every month your manager or treasurer sends a stack of reports: bank reconciliations, bank statements, budget comparisons, the check register, the general ledger and more. Under §5500 the board is supposed to look at all of it. Most boards don't have the time.
How money goes missing
When association money goes missing, it's usually because one person handled both the payments and the books, and the board approved the reports without looking closely. It often comes out years later, and by accident.
Board members are volunteers, not accountants. We read the packet line by line and tell you what's worth asking about. We don't work for your management company. We work for the board.
How it works
Three steps, a few minutes a month
Upload
Sign in to your association's account and upload the monthly packet from your manager, plus the bank statements you download from your bank's website.
We check it
We compare your manager's numbers with the bank's own records, go through each report §5500 lists, and look at every payment that went out.
Your board gets a summary
Every board member gets a short summary of what checked out and what needs a question, with the details behind each item and a short paragraph for your minutes.
Red flags
What we check every month
These come up again and again when association money goes wrong. Most have an ordinary explanation, but the board should know about them.
- Bank balances that don't match the books
- Checks that cleared the bank but aren't in the books
- Missing or late deposits
- New or unfamiliar vendors
- The same payment made twice
- Money moved out of the reserve account
- Spending running ahead of budget
- More owners falling behind on dues
- Payments above a vendor's contract or approved quote
Sample summary
What your board gets each month
Alert means look at it now, Ask means put the question to your manager, and OK means it checked out. The pages after the summary explain each item and what to ask.
This is real output from our checks, run on a fictional association's March 2026 reports. The association, vendors and figures are made up.
Oak Hollow Commons HOA · March 2026
1 alert · 3 questions · 8 items checked out
And 6 more items that checked out.
See the full sample report, including what to ask about each item.
Privacy
Your documents stay between your board and us.
The only outside companies that handle your files are the ones that host, store and deliver them for us, and they can't use them for anything else. Read our Privacy Policy.
- We never sell or share them. Not with Google, Meta or other advertisers, not with your management company or other associations, and not with anyone else.
- No AI services. Your documents are read and checked by our own software. They're never sent to AI companies.
- A private account for each association. Only the board members you invite can sign in and see your documents and reports.
- Encrypted while they're sent to us and while they're stored.
- Deleted when you leave, within 90 days of canceling, or sooner if you ask.
Pricing
Priced by the size of your association
Every plan includes the same checks. Larger associations pay more because they have more accounts, vendors and payments to go through.
Try it free: your first month is on us. No card needed to sign up.
Lookback
Worried about the past? Look back up to three years.
Money problems in associations are rarely one big theft. They're small amounts, month after month, that only show up as a pattern. A Lookback runs our monthly checks on every past month and then looks across the whole period.
It's a good fit when a new board or treasurer takes over, when you change management companies, or when something just doesn't feel right.
- Bank balances that don't carry over from one month to the next
- New vendors that start getting paid every month
- Payments just under the board's approval limit
- Management fees above the contract amount
- Monthly reports that don't match the CPA's annual report
One-time price
| Association size | Up to 12 months | Up to 36 months |
|---|---|---|
| Up to 50 units | $249 | $449 |
| 51 to 200 units | $399 | $699 |
| More than 200 units | $599 | $999 |
Includes a written summary for the board, a list of questions to put to management, and three months of monthly checks free.
Sign up for a LookbackA Lookback flags items to ask about. It isn't an audit or a fraud investigation, and it can't prove that nothing went wrong.
Launching soon
Sign up for a free first month, or a Lookback
Second Signer opens soon. Sign up and we'll email you as soon as your board can start.
There's nothing to pay and nothing to send yet. After your free month, plans are $49 to $199 a month depending on your association's size, and you can cancel anytime.
FAQ
Questions boards ask
When can we start?
We're opening soon. Sign up and we'll email you as soon as your board can start. There's nothing to pay or send until then.
Is this an audit?
No. Second Signer is not a CPA audit, review, or compilation, and it doesn't replace any annual financial statement work your association is required to have done by a licensed CPA. It's a monthly check that flags items for your board to ask about and helps you keep up with your monthly review duty.
Does this replace our management company?
No. Your manager keeps doing the books. We check what they send the board. It's good for honest managers too: every month the books check out is a month on the record.
Do we need our manager's permission?
No. You upload the financial materials your board already receives. The association's records belong to the association.
Why do you want bank statements straight from the bank?
Everything else in the monthly packet is prepared by your management company. The bank statement is the one record that comes from someone else. If a reconciliation doesn't match the bank, the bank's own statement is where that shows. Most banks give board members view-only online access, and downloading a month's statements takes a couple of minutes. Civil Code §5500(d) already asks the board to review them.
What happens to our documents?
They're used only to prepare your association's reports, and the promises in our Privacy section above apply to all of them. Our reports use only totals from delinquency reports, never homeowners' names or balances. You're welcome to black out names and bank account numbers before uploading. We only need the last four digits of each account. Our Privacy Policy has the details.
What if you find something serious?
We show the board exactly what we found and which documents it came from. We don't draw conclusions about why it happened or who was involved. For anything the records don't explain, we suggest talking with your association's CPA or attorney, who can also tell you whether your insurance policy has any notice requirements.
Will it work with our management company's reports?
Most likely. We read the PDF reports that management companies send out each month. Tell us who your management company is when you sign up. If their reports use a layout we haven't seen before, we'll tell you before your first check.
We're self-managed. Can we still use it?
Yes. Send the reports your treasurer already keeps. PDFs work, and so do Excel and CSV files exported from QuickBooks or your own spreadsheets. Bank statements should still be the PDF you download from your bank's website, since that's the one record nobody on the board prepared.
Do you work with associations outside California?
Yes, in every state. The checks are the same everywhere. Only the §5500 parts of the summary and the minutes paragraph are specific to California. See the main page.