Compliance tracking — Australia
One missed smoke-alarm service or expired pool cert can mean fines in the thousands, a voided landlord-insurance claim, and a losing position at tribunal. The register plus automatic reminders make the miss the exception — one prevented incident typically pays for years of the subscription. Indicative figures; every portfolio differs.
Missing a compliance deadline — smoke alarm annual, pool cert, gas safety — is a direct exposure. PMFriend ships a per-state compliance register the day a property joins your portfolio.
Where to find it: sidebar → Compliance. The four counters on top are the whole story: what's overdue, what's due soon, what's coming, what's done.
The before-and-after
Before PMFriend
Smoke alarm annual servicing comes around. Sarah doesn't realise until a tenant complains about a beeping unit. She rings three smoke-alarm contractors — two are booked out three weeks. She books the third, hopes the owner doesn't complain about the urgency markup. Time spent over the year: ~3 hours per property × 150 properties.
After PMFriend
30 days before the smoke-alarm anniversary, a banner appears on Sarah's dashboard: "Smoke alarm servicing due in 30 days at 12 Chapel St". She clicks. PMFriend offers two smoke-alarm contractors with insurance currently valid. She books one. When the contractor marks the job done, the compliance task auto-completes. Time spent per property per year: ~5 minutes.
What's in the register
Per-state defaults for all 8 AU jurisdictions, checked against each state's legislation in September 2026:
| Category | NSW | VIC | QLD | WA | SA | TAS | ACT | NT |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Smoke alarms | annual | annual | before each tenancy | replace at 10 yrs | annual, recommended | start of each tenancy | annual, recommended | before each tenancy |
| Minimum standards | — | before each new renter | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Gas safety | — | 2-yr | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Electrical safety | — | 2-yr | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Pool safety cert | 3-yr | 4-yr | 2-yr | — | — | — | — | — |
| Landlord insurance | practice, annual | practice, annual | practice, annual | practice, annual | practice, annual | practice, annual | practice, annual | practice, annual |
| Routine inspections | practice, 6-mo | practice, 6-mo | practice, 3-mo | practice, 6-mo | practice, 6-mo | practice, 6-mo | practice, 6-mo | practice, 6-mo |
"Before each tenancy" obligations appear when you record the lease, due on the day the tenancy starts. In Queensland, Tasmania and the Northern Territory the landlord's smoke-alarm duty falls then, not once a year. Victoria's minimum standards must be met on or before the day the renter moves in.
"Recommended" and "practice" rows are reminders, not legal duties. No Australian state requires landlord insurance. Routine inspections are limited by law, not required: each rule's description gives your state's limit.
Pools: tell PMFriend which properties have a pool. Until you do, every property in NSW,
Victoria and Queensland gets a pool-safety reminder, because a missed pool certificate is worse
than an extra task. Choose No pool on the property page, or No pool here on the task, or add
a has_pool column (yes / no) to your properties spreadsheet and upload it again. The open pool
task is then marked as not applying. It stays in the register, and no new ones are made.
Queensland shared pools need a certificate every year: set the rule to 12 months under
Compliance → Rules if that is your stock.
⚖️ Important: Reminder cadences, not legal certifications. Your agency stays responsible for interpreting the specific rules that apply to each property. PMFriend's job is to make sure nothing slips through the cracks; verifying compliance against the actual statute stays with the qualified humans.
How reminders work
For every active rule:
- 30 days before due — first banner: "Coming up" (skipped when a deadline is already less than a week away, so you get one notice instead of two)
- 7 days before due — banner upgraded to "Action needed"
- Past due — banner red, "Overdue"
Days are counted in the property's own time zone: a Perth deadline ticks in Perth time.
Banners are clickable — they take you straight to the task with a Book contractor button visible.
Make the defaults yours
PMFriend ships sensible defaults for every state. If your agency does something differently — services the AC every six months instead of yearly, or doesn't manage pools — open Compliance → Rules and change it:
- How often — pick a different cadence for any obligation (one month to ten years).
- Which month — for yearly obligations, pin the task to a month: due by the end of March for the chiller service, so it is done before the summer rather than a year after the property joined. Qatar's chiller service ships pinned to March.
- On / off — switch off an obligation that doesn't apply to how you manage.
- Reset — back to PMFriend's default at any time.
Changes take effect the next time a task is completed: due dates already on your register never move under you, and switching something off stops new tasks without removing the open ones. Obligations that run from the lease dates (like Qatar's lease registration) can be switched off but have no cadence to change. Only an admin can change rules; everyone can see them. You can't create new obligation types — the list comes from PMFriend, state by state.
Acting on a task: from the register or from the property
Click any task, in Compliance or on a property's Compliance tab. The list shows each open task's next step, and the task opens with that step first:
- Contractor work (smoke alarms, gas, electrical, pool, fire safety, lifts, AC / chiller service):
Book now creates the work order.
- The contractor is picked for you. It is whoever did this job at this property last time, otherwise one whose trade fits, otherwise a specialist whose name fits (a lift or fire company). PMFriend says why it picked them, and you can change it.
- Pick a visit date if you know it. The job is then booked as scheduled, and the contractor can still move it on their link.
- Inspections (routine inspections, Victorian minimum standards): Start the inspection opens a new inspection for that property with the checklist ready. Record the task as done once it is issued.
- Paperwork (insurance renewal, lease registration, deposit return): Record it as done, with the policy number, registration number or amount in the note. There is no contractor to book.
A task already booked shows Booked and is never booked twice. When the contractor marks the job complete, the task closes on its own and PMFriend schedules the next one.
Evidence
For each completed task, attach a PDF cert, a photo, free-text notes, or the work-order ID. This is what you'd hand to a tribunal if a dispute came up — or build into a case pack.
Operating in Qatar?
This page covers the Australian compliance register. Gulf portfolios get their own rule-set and their own page: Compliance tracking in Qatar →