Frequently Asked Questions

ALC is a building management platform with two surfaces. Building managers get a web dashboard for messaging, defects, document management, parcels, intercoms, EV charging, metering, and facility bookings. Residents get a native mobile app to use those same features from their phone. The two are connected in real time — when a resident reports a defect, the manager sees it instantly.

Strata managers and body corporate managers running portfolios of residential buildings, property managers in the rental space, and developers who want to specify a complete smart-building platform at construction. See For Strata, For Property Managers, or For Developers for the specifics.

Most existing strata platforms are accounting tools with a portal bolted on. ALC starts from the resident experience and works backward — defects, bookings, parcels, intercoms, EV, and metering are first-class. We don't replace your trust accounting software; we sit alongside it and own the operational and resident-facing layer.

Application servers and databases run in Sydney, Australia (Linode). Push notification delivery uses Firebase Cloud Messaging (Google infrastructure, may route via the United States), and transactional email uses Resend. All data is encrypted in transit and at rest. Full details are in our Privacy Policy.

You do. We hold operational and resident data on your behalf, and you can request a full export at any time, including when you leave. We never sell data, and we never use customer data to train third-party machine-learning models.

Yes. We operate in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the 13 Australian Privacy Principles. Our Privacy Policy sets out exactly how we collect, store, use, and disclose personal information, and how residents and managers can access or correct their data.

Pricing has three components: a one-off onboarding fee per building (covers setup, configuration, and any hardware we supply — intercoms, lobby tablets, on-site nodes, EV chargers, metering), the subscription for the software modules you turn on, and ongoing support. We tailor each to your portfolio size and hardware footprint. Email hello@automatedlife.com.au with a rough description of your buildings and we'll come back with concrete numbers.

Software-only subscriptions are billed monthly with no minimum term. Deployments that include hardware (intercoms, EV chargers, metering equipment) typically run on multi-year terms tied to the hardware amortisation — we'll discuss the right structure when we scope your project.

Software-only rollouts (existing building, no new hardware) are quick — most of the work is residents downloading the app and your team uploading documents. Rollouts that include intercom replacement, EV charger commissioning, or metering installation depend on site logistics — we'll give you a real timeline once we see the building.

EV charging is OCPP 2.0.1, so any standards-compliant charge point will work. Intercoms use SIP for call routing. Metering supports BACnet, Modbus, and M-Bus — ingested via a secure on-site node, so no meter is ever exposed to the public internet. For strata accounting software, we don't replace your trust accounting — we integrate where there's a documented API or work alongside it. Tell us what you've got and we'll confirm fit before committing.

All subscriptions include email support from the team that built the platform — no first-line script-readers. Critical incidents (the platform is down or a building's intercom isn't working) get escalated ahead of the queue. Details on our Support page.

You get a complete export — buildings, residents, defects, messages, documents, audit logs — in machine-readable formats (CSV/JSON). Personal data is then deleted from our systems as soon as reasonably practicable, except where retention is required by law. Full detail in our Privacy Policy.