The Condominium Cash Journal (Prima Nota) Explained

The condominium cash journal, known in Italy as the prima nota, is the chronological record in which the administrator notes, day by day and in the order in which they occur, every receipt and payment of the management. It is not a formal document imposed with a specific name by the Italian Civil Code, but it is the working record that feeds the accounting register required by Article 1130, number 7, and, downstream, the annual report of Article 1130-bis. In practice it is a continuous snapshot of the money coming in and going out.

Cash journal and accounting register: the difference

The two terms are often used as synonyms, but it helps to distinguish them. The cash journal is the operational tool, the orderly scratchpad where a movement is noted as soon as it happens. The accounting register is the document required by law, which gathers each receipt and payment in chronological order and must be updated within thirty days of the operation. In modern practice, with software, the cash journal and the register coincide: you record once and the data flows into the official register.

What matters is that every line is traceable: date, amount, description, counterparty and a link to the current account or the cash box on which the movement took place.

What is recorded in the cash journal

The cash journal captures every event that moves condominium money, regardless of the nature of the expense or the income.

• Owner payments for ordinary and extraordinary instalments.
• Payments to service suppliers and professionals.
• Shared utilities such as electricity, water and central heating.
• The administrator's fee and management costs.
• Movements between the current account and the cash box and vice versa.
• Bank fees and charges, interest, unpaid items and reversals.

The link with the condominium bank account

Since the 2012 reform, Article 1129, paragraph 7, of the Italian Civil Code requires all sums to pass through an account held in the condominium's name. The cash journal must therefore mirror the account movements. Every entry should be findable on the bank statement and vice versa: it is precisely this comparison, the bank reconciliation, that makes the cash journal reliable. A cash journal that does not dialogue with the bank loses much of its evidential value.

If the condominium also keeps a small cash box for minor expenses, the related movements go in a dedicated section, with withdrawals from the current account recorded as transfers to the cash box.

Cash basis, not accrual basis

The cash journal follows the cash basis: a movement is recorded when the money comes in or goes out, not when the expense accrues. An invoice received in December but paid in January appears in the cash journal in January. This does not mean the annual report can ignore accrual: to represent management correctly it must also account for items belonging to the financial year that are not yet collected or paid. The cash journal provides the cash figure, while the explanatory note and memorandum accounts bridge the accrual view.

Frequent mistakes to avoid

Some habits make the cash journal unreliable and generate disputes at the owners' meeting.

• Recording late, piling up weeks of movements and risking omissions.
• Using generic descriptions such as sundry or expenses, which make the operation impossible to reconstruct.
• Mixing funds of different condominiums in a single cash journal.
• Failing to note cash-box movements, which then cannot be reconciled.
• Netting receipts and payments on one line instead of recording them separately.

Why an orderly cash journal pays off

A well-kept cash journal is the administrator's best defence. It allows the annual report to be prepared quickly and consistently, questions from owners to be answered, and an audit or an end-of-term handover to be faced without stress. It is also the basis of the accounting register whose absence, according to case law, can make the resolution approving the report challengeable.

Modern management software turns the cash journal into an almost automatic task: it imports bank movements, suggests the description and updates the register and the report at the same time. With AmministraPro the entry is made only once and feeds all the connected accounting documents, as shown on the /funzioni page, with the available plans on /prezzi.