Electronic Records and Website Posting for Florida Condominium Associations

Jason Hamilton Mikes, JD, MBA
Founder & Managing Shareholder

• Published September 25, 2026
• Reviewed by Jason Hamilton Mikes, JD, MBA, September 26, 2026
• Florida Statutes as of July 1, 2026
• Applies to: Condominiums

Florida condominium law is now written on the assumption that association records are digital. The statute permits records to be kept and produced electronically, and for any condominium with 25 or more units it goes further and requires a website or mobile application where a specified set of documents is posted within 30 days. Done well, the portal answers most records requests before anyone sends one. Done badly, it is a published record of the association's noncompliance.

You may keep the records electronically

Section 718.111(12)(b) requires official records to be maintained within Florida and in an organized manner, and it allows the association to satisfy an owner's inspection request by making the records available electronically over the Internet, or by allowing them to be viewed in electronic format on a computer screen with printed copies furnished on request. Nothing in the statute obliges an association to keep paper originals of records that were created or received digitally.

That permission is genuinely useful. A board that scans and indexes its records can answer a request in an afternoon rather than a fortnight, and it removes any argument that the records are not in the county. It also protects against the two events that most often destroy an association's file room in Southwest Florida: a storm, and a change of management company.

There are limits. Electronic storage does not shorten a retention period, does not change what is exempt from inspection, and does not create a charge for something the association could not charge for on paper. A scanned copy is also only as good as its legibility. A blurred photograph of a signature page is not a production of the contract. The categories themselves, and how long each is kept, are covered in our guide to what a condominium association must keep.

Which associations must have a website or app

The obligation in section 718.111(12)(g) applies to an association operating a condominium with 25 or more units that does not contain timeshare units. The threshold counts units, not buildings and not the size of the budget. A great many Lee and Collier County associations that were outside the rule a few years ago are now inside it.

The statute gives two ways to satisfy it. The association may operate an independent website, application or web portal that it wholly owns and operates. Or it may use a website, application or web portal operated by a third-party provider where the association owns, leases, rents or otherwise obtains the right to operate a page dedicated to the association's activities. The second option is what most associations use, because it arrives bundled with the management platform. Either way the site must be accessible through the Internet.

Bundling the portal with the management contract creates a specific risk worth planning for. When the management relationship ends, the portal and the documents inside it frequently belong to the vendor. Ask before signing what happens to the posted documents and the underlying files on termination, and get the answer in the agreement rather than in an e-mail from a salesperson.

What has to be posted

The posting list is in section 718.111(12)(g)2. It is narrower than the full official records list, which is the point. The statute is asking for the documents an owner would otherwise request most often.

• The recorded declaration and each amendment, the recorded bylaws and each amendment, and the articles of incorporation and each amendment filed with the Department of State
• The rules of the association
• Approved minutes of board meetings over the preceding 12 months, and the video recording or a hyperlink to it for meetings conducted by video conference over the preceding 12 months
• Executory contracts and documents to which the association is a party or under which it has an obligation, together with a list of bids received within the past year
• The annual budget and any proposed budget to be considered at the annual meeting
• The annual financial report and any monthly income or expense statement to be considered at a meeting
• The certification of each director
• Contracts between the association and a director, officer or an entity in which a director or officer has an interest, and any document regarding a conflict of interest
• Notice of any unit owner meeting and the agenda, no later than 14 days before the meeting, and notice of any board meeting with its agenda
• Milestone and other structural or life safety inspection reports, and the most recent structural integrity reserve study
• Copies of all building permits, and a copy of all affidavits required by the chapter

Two items catch boards out. The bid list is a running obligation rather than an annual one, and a board that posts contracts but not the bids it received has not complied. And the meeting notice items connect the posting duty to the notice and agenda rules. Posting to the website is in addition to, not instead of, physical posting on the condominium property.

The 30-day clock

A document required to be posted must be made available on the website, or made available for download through the mobile application, within 30 days after the association receives or creates the official record. The clock runs from receipt or creation. It does not run from the next board meeting, and it does not run from the date the minutes approving the item are adopted.

That distinction does real work. An engineer's inspection report received on the first of the month must be posted by the end of the month even if the board has not yet discussed it. A signed contract goes up within 30 days of signature. The one item on the list with an approval condition built into it is board minutes, which are posted once approved, and the one item with an earlier deadline is the owner meeting notice and agenda, which goes up no later than 14 days before the meeting.

The practical fix is to make posting part of the workflow rather than part of a quarterly cleanup. When a contract is executed, posting is a step in executing it. When a report arrives, posting is a step in receiving it. A board that batches posting once a quarter will be late on most of what it posts.

The owner-only area and what must never be posted

The site must contain a subpage, web portal or other protected electronic location that is inaccessible to the general public and accessible only to unit owners and employees of the association. On a unit owner's written request, the association must provide that owner with a username and password and access to the protected sections. The board cannot condition credentials on the owner being current in assessments, on signing a waiver, or on anything else the statute does not authorize.

Before anything goes up, the association must ensure that information protected or restricted under the exemptions in section 718.111(12)(c) is redacted. The categories that matter most on a website are owner personal identifying information, information obtained in connection with the approval of a lease, sale or other transfer, personnel records, medical records, and anything covered by the attorney-client or work-product privilege. Our guide to records exempt from inspection sets out the scope of each.

The statute gives the association and its agent a measure of protection here. They are not liable for disclosing information that is protected or restricted under the paragraph unless the disclosure was made with a knowing or intentional disregard of the protected or restricted nature of the information. That is a real defense for an honest mistake. It is not a defense for a board that posts the full owner roster with telephone numbers because nobody thought about it.

Two habits prevent nearly all of these problems. Redact before the document enters the posting queue rather than at the moment of upload. And keep one person responsible for the queue, so redaction is a step in a process rather than a judgment made by whoever happens to be logged in.

Scanning, naming and indexing so the portal answers the request

The statutory minimum is a posting list. The operational goal is more valuable: a portal complete enough that the association's usual answer to a records request is a link and a sentence. Getting there is mostly discipline in five places.

1. Scan to searchable PDF. Run optical character recognition so the text inside the document is findable. A folder of image-only scans is a filing cabinet with extra steps.
2. Adopt one file naming convention and never deviate. Date first in year-month-day form, then category, then a short description. Dates that sort correctly are worth more than any folder structure.
3. Mirror the statutory categories in the folder tree. Governing documents, minutes, financials, contracts and bids, insurance, inspections and reserves, elections, permits, correspondence. When the folders match section 718.111(12)(a), a request maps onto a folder rather than onto a search.
4. Keep a redacted set and an unredacted set. The unredacted originals stay in the association's control. The redacted versions are what get posted or produced. Never redact the only copy.
5. Index what is not online. An index of the paper still in storage, by category and date range, is what turns an unanswerable request into a ten-minute task.

For a board setting this up from scratch, our electronic records management guide covers the file structure and the handover questions to ask a management company. The payoff is not only compliance. An association that can produce anything in a day is an association that rarely ends up litigating a records request.

Our recommendation: post more than the statute requires

Everything above is the floor. The list in section 718.111(12)(g)2. is what an association must post. It is not a limit on what the association may post, and nothing in the chapter prohibits a board from putting more of its file behind the owner login. Our recommendation to condominium boards is to go well past the list. Digitize every official record that is not in an exempt category and post all of it in the protected area: the older minutes, the closed contracts, the bank statements and ledgers, the insurance policies, the permits, the correspondence file. The statutory list is the set of documents an owner asks for in a quiet year.

The case for it is the work it removes and the disputes it prevents. An association whose file is already online answers most inspection requests with a link and a sentence, which costs a manager minutes rather than a day of appointments, supervision and copying. The disputes follow the work. Most of the records cases we see began with a board that could not produce quickly; outright refusal is rarer than disorganization. An owner who can read the file at eleven at night generally never writes the letter that starts one.

Be exact about what this does not do. It does not answer a request for a record that is not posted. That request runs on the ordinary clock and gets an ordinary response. It does not extend or excuse the 10 working days in section 718.111(12)(b), and "it is on the website" is a complete answer only where the website is a complete answer. Where it is not, the association has given a late response with a link attached. And it does not touch the exempt categories. The records described in section 718.111(12)(c)5.a.–h. stay off the site, and subparagraph (g)3. requires protected information inside a posted document to be redacted before it goes up. Posting more means redacting more, which is why the review step described above matters more as the library grows, not less.

E-mail and text messages

This is where the law is least settled and where boards most often assume the answer they prefer. Start with what is clear. Section 718.112(2)(c) allows board members to use e-mail as a means of communication but provides that they may not cast a vote on an association matter by e-mail. A decision reached in an e-mail thread and ratified later is a decision made outside a noticed meeting, and the thread is the evidence of it.

Whether a given message is an official record turns on content. Section 718.111(12)(a)21. covers all other written records of the association related to the operation of the association. A message between directors arranging lunch is not a record. A message string in which the board works out how to handle a vendor claim plainly relates to the operation of the association. The statute does not resolve the harder middle cases, and no Florida appellate decision squarely settles whether messages held in a director's personal account are official records of the association.

Because the answer is uncertain, take the conservative operating assumption. Conduct association business on association accounts rather than personal ones. Assume any message about association business could be read aloud at a hearing. And when litigation is filed or reasonably anticipated, preserve everything, including text messages, which is the subject of our guide to litigation holds and record preservation.

Boards that want the day-to-day detail should read our separate discussion of board e-mail and text messages. The short version is that the convenience of a group text is rarely worth the cost of explaining it later.

Contact Hamilton Mikes

Hamilton Mikes advises Southwest Florida condominium boards on website and posting compliance, redaction before posting, and the records provisions buried in management and portal agreements. Call 239-594-7227 or visit our Official Records page.