Email Archiving for Strata Managers NSW

Q: Can we just use Microsoft 365 retention policies instead?

Microsoft 365 retention can hold data for seven years and for some firms that is a reasonable starting point. Two limitations matter for strata: retention is tied to licensed mailboxes, so offboarding and licence changes need careful handling, and the controls sit with the same administrators who manage the tenant. A separate immutable archive removes both dependencies.

Q: What happens to archived records if we change IT providers?

The archive is your record, not ours. Records are exportable in a standard format at any time, including on exit.

Strata correspondence is a statutory record. Section 180(1)(d) of the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 (NSW) requires copies of correspondence received and sent by the owners corporation to be retained for seven years - and since 11 June 2024, section 176 requires those records to be kept in electronic form.

A mailbox is not a compliant record system. An immutable archive is.

Microsolve archives every message your team sends and receives, automatically, in a tamper-proof store that outlives the mailbox, the licence and the staff member who held it.

Section 180(1) lists what an owners corporation must retain for seven years. Four of those categories live largely or entirely in email Inboxes.

**Statutory strata records and where they actually live**
Record category	Provision	Where it usually sits	Risk without an archive
Correspondence received and sent	s 180(1)(d)	Individual staff mailboxes	Deleted with the mailbox when the manager leaves
Records of delegated functions given by the agent	s 180(1)(i)	Email threads and the strata platform	Cannot be reconstructed for the six-monthly report
Notices of meetings	s 180(1)(e)	Sent items, often bulk-sent	No proof of issue or delivery
Proxies and voting papers	s 180(1)(f), (g)	Email attachments	Attachment lost, ballot outcome unprovable
Minor renovation approvals	10 years, not 7	Email approval threads	Retention policy set to 7 years deletes them too early

That last row catches most firms out! NSW Fair Trading states that owners corporations must keep a record of approved minor renovations for ten years, not seven.
A retention policy set uniformly to seven years is non-compliant for that record class.

Since 1 July 2025, section 55(2) requires a strata managing agent to give the owners corporation a copy of the records of delegated functions every six months, reduced from every twelve. Producing records is no longer something that happens when a dispute arises. It is a recurring deadline, twice a year, for every scheme in your portfolio.

If assembling that report means manually searching mailboxes, the cost scales with your scheme count. If your correspondence is in a searchable archive, it is a query.

Captures at the server, not the client

Every inbound and outbound message is journalled before a user can touch it. Deleting from Outlook does not remove the archived copy.

Write-once storage

Archived messages cannot be altered or removed inside the retention period, by staff or by us. That is what makes the record evidentiary rather than merely available

Search across the whole firm

One query across every mailbox, current and former, by scheme, lot, date range, sender or attachment

Independent of Microsoft 365 licensing

The archive survives licence removal, mailbox conversion and offboarding. You are not paying to keep a licence alive just to keep a record

Strata record-keeping challenges we solve

Turn Chaos into Structure with Teams and SharePoint

Strata managers juggle dozens of schemes, but unstructured Teams creates lost files, compliance risks, and daily frustration. Microsolve delivers custom governance – hub-and-spoke structure, scheme channels, SharePoint retention – turning Teams into your scalable command centre.

Stop Losing Emails with Staff Turnover

When strata team members leave or schemes get reassigned, critical email history often vanishes with their personal inbox. Immutable email archiving keeps every message searchable and scheme-attributable, regardless of who handles it.

See how to protect your strata emails from staff turnover losses

Protection from Strata Disputes and Defamation

Emails can make or break NCAT cases. Don't let deletions or "lost" messages undermine your position. Immutable archiving ensures every strata email is tamper-proof and automatically available.

Learn more about immutable archiving for Disputes & Defammation

Can strata managers meet NSW’s new electronic record‑keeping rules without drowning?

Yes! An immutable email archiving captures every message before it reaches any mailbox, automatically encrypting, indexing, and storing it in an unchangeable cloud archive so correspondence is retained for the required seven years, easily searchable by scheme, and defensible in audits—even when staff leave or emails are deleted locally.

Explore an Email Archive Solution designed for Strata

How do I manage email sent to personal Inboxes?

A company wide email archive captures all messages and permanently stores them

Every email captured and stored

Do strata managers legally need email archiving?

The legislation requires the records to be retained for seven years in electronic form; it does not name a product.

Archiving is how firms meet that obligation reliably, because the alternative is depending onindividual mailboxes that get deleted, reassigned or emptied by users.

How long do strata email records need to be kept?

Seven years for correspondence, minutes, financial records, proxies and voting papers under section 180(1).

Records of approved minor renovations must be kept for ten years, so a single seven-year policy is not sufficient.

Can we just use Microsoft 365 retention policies instead?

Microsoft 365 retention can hold data for seven years, and for some firms that is a reasonable starting point.

Two limitations matter for strata:

retention is tied to licensed mailboxes, so offboarding and licence changes need careful handling, and
the controls sit with the same
administrators who manage the tenant.

A separate immutable archive removes
both dependencies. We will tell you honestly which one your firm needs.

What happens to archived records if we change IT providers?

The archive is your record, not ours!

Records are exportable in a standard format at any time, including on exit.

Does archiving slow down our email?

No.

Journalling happens server-side and is invisible to users. Nothing changes in Outlook.

Email Archiving for Strata Managers

Which strata records does the seven-year rule cover?

You now have to produce records every six months!

What immutable archiving actually does