Society Management Software in Kerala

I write this from Lucknow and have never sat in a Kerala general body meeting. But committee members in Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram and the Gulf ask me different questions from Noida or Pune. Here is what I have learned.

The law is in flux, and your software should not care

Kerala has its own statute, the Kerala Apartment Ownership Act, 1983. It is voluntary: Section 2 applies it only to buildings whose owners execute and register a declaration, so many associations registered as societies under the Travancore-Cochin Act of 1955 (or the 1860 Act in old Malabar) instead. Two things are moving at once:

• In February 2024 the state told the Kerala High Court, in V K Sankarankutty v State of Kerala, that a high-level committee, convened by the RERA secretary, would find the gaps between the 1983 Act and RERA and decide whether the Act should become mandatory.
• In September 2025 the government tabled the Kerala Societies Registration Bill to replace both the 1955 and 1860 Acts with one law.

My advice: keep the member register, bye-laws, resolutions and audited accounts in one dated place, because whichever way this lands you will be asked for them. The accounts module does not care which Act you are registered under.

GST in Kerala is the strict reading

In Kerala the CBIC circular of July 2019 is what applies: cross Rs 7,500 per member per month and Rs 20 lakh a year, and 18 percent GST falls on the full contribution. The Madras High Court held in July 2021 that only the excess is taxable, but that binds Tamil Nadu, the Centre appealed within two months, and the Supreme Court has not settled it. The bigger towers with clubhouses and lifts are the ones that cross the limit, so GST is set per society as its own invoice line.

Where the buyers are

Kochi is most of my Kerala enquiries. Infopark at Kakkanad houses 582 companies and about 72,000 professionals as of 2025, and the towers around it, plus Edappally, Vyttila and Tripunithura, are where new associations form each year. In Thiruvananthapuram the belt runs from Kazhakkoottam to Akkulam around Technopark, home to over 490 companies and more than 75,000 professionals. Kozhikode, Thrissur and Kollam are smaller societies where the one-time price usually beats monthly.

The NRI owner problem

The Kerala Migration Survey 2023 counts 2.2 million emigrants from the state. Nearly every Kerala committee I speak to has owners in the Gulf, tenants in the flat, and a treasurer who cannot get a vote or a payment out of either. Remote login, tenant logins, in-app polls and automatic receipts matter more here than anywhere else.

Smaller things that come up

• Property tax for flats in municipalities and corporations has moved from Sanchaya to KSMART; the old tax.lsgkerala.gov.in address now redirects there. Each owner still pays their own flat's tax; the software only tracks the association's dues.
• Maradu is still fresh. After the Supreme Court ordered the CRZ-violating flats demolished in 2019, it directed the state to pay Rs 25 lakh interim compensation to each owner, and some owners were still chasing the balance in 2022. Committees now ask to keep approvals, NOCs and the occupancy certificate with the society record as uploaded documents; scan them before go-live.
• Malayalam: notices typed in Malayalam display correctly in the app and notice board. A full Malayalam menu is custom work I quote separately; most committees have not asked, since residents read English.

Remote from Lucknow, or someone local?

I work on WhatsApp and video calls in the same time zone, load opening balances from your Excel ledger, and train the security desk over a screen share. MyGate and the other national apps quote per society after a demo and do not publish a price. Mine is published: Rs 29,999 one-time or Rs 2,999 a month, about Rs 15 per flat at 200 flats.

Pick a local vendor if you need boom barriers and biometric gates physically installed, or a person who can attend the AGM in Ernakulam. For the software itself, distance is not what decides it; the committee's willingness to leave Excel is.