Expenses Not Approved by the Meeting: the Manager's Risk

A manager who incurs an expense without the required resolution acts beyond the mandate and risks not obtaining the meeting's ratification, with resulting personal liability for the amount spent. The genuinely urgent expense is the exception: if the intervention could not be postponed, the manager keeps the right to reimbursement even without prior authorization, provided they report it to the first meeting as required by Article 1135 of the Italian Civil Code. It all turns on proving urgency.

The principle: the manager executes, does not decide alone

A condominium rests on the separation between who resolves, the meeting, and who executes, the manager. Extraordinary maintenance expenses, improvements, and commitments beyond ordinary management require a collective decision. When the manager spends in these areas without a resolution, they perform an act exceeding their power of representation. The meeting may adopt it through ratification, but is not obliged to do so.

Urgent expense and arbitrary expense

The dividing line is urgency. An expense is lawful even without a prior resolution when it addresses a situation that cannot be postponed: a fault that worsens the damage, a safety hazard, the interruption of an essential service. Arbitrary, instead, is the expense that, however useful or convenient, could have waited for the meeting's decision. In the first case the manager is entitled to reimbursement; in the second they risk bearing it themselves.

What refused ratification entails

If the meeting refuses to ratify a non-urgent expense, the manager cannot charge it to the owners against their will. The consequences can vary:

• The amount stays with the manager who exceeded their powers
• The relationship of trust cracks, with possible removal from office
• If the condominium suffers harm, liability for damages may arise
• Any advances find no coverage in the condominium's accounts

For this reason the decision to spend outside a resolution should be taken only when urgency is real and documentable, never for mere managerial convenience.

How to show you acted correctly

Proving urgency is the manager's responsibility. Before ordering an unresolved intervention, it is wise to gather objective evidence: photographs of the fault, a technician's report or record, communications received from owners, any order from an authority. Documenting the timeline, that is when the problem arose and how quickly the response came, helps justify the choice not to wait for the meeting.

The role of the approved budget

Many disputes arise from ordinary expenses that exceed the budget estimates. If a budgeted item turns out insufficient, the manager who covers it stays within ordinary management, but must account for the variance in the final statement. Different is the case of expenses entirely outside the budget and extraordinary in nature: here the meeting's authorization is the rule. Distinguishing an overrun on an ordinary item from an unbudgeted extraordinary expense is essential to understand one's position.

Preventing through prompt communication

Even faced with urgency, immediately informing the owners, or at least the council where one exists, reduces the risk of disputes. A message explaining the problem, the choice made, and the expected costs prepares the ground for ratification and shows good faith. Transparency does not remove the duty to report to the meeting, but anticipates it and makes it less confrontational.

Keeping a record of every spending decision

The best defense is an orderly archive that links each expense to its justification: resolution, documented urgency, or budget estimate. With a platform like AmministraPro the manager attaches to each payment the basis that authorizes it, keeps the documentation of urgency, and reconstructs the sequence of events in case of dispute: the features are on /funzioni, the plans for firms on /prezzi.