How Common Elements works

A property manager who runs five associations, sits on her own condo board, and sends business to a roofer she trusts has, in most software, five accounts. In Common Elements she has one. The platform’s context switcher (top-left of every authenticated page) flips you between organizations without re-authenticating; what you can do at any moment is determined by your active context, not by which login you just used.

Behind the scenes that’s the “user ↔ memberships ↔ organizations” data model — every membership records your role at that org, what you’re allowed to do, and which surfaces apply.

• The Common Area — an industry-wide forum where boards, managers, vendors, attorneys, and insurance pros discuss what actually works. Public threads are anonymously readable so the discussions are also a learning resource for newcomers; member-only rooms (CAM Corner, Board Discussions, Vendor Talk, Legal) sit behind sign-in.
• The RFP Hub — post a request once, vendors respond with structured bid fields, and the Compare view aligns every proposal to the same line items so a board can decide on apples-to-apples. Public RFPs reach every verified vendor in the trade category; private RFPs reach only vendors the poster specifically approves.
• The Vendor Directory — verified profiles searchable by service line and service area. Verification badges are credential-backed (LCAM, contractor license, attorney bar admission, insurance license) — not pay-to-play. Reviews are tied to specific completed engagements and to the verified board member or manager who wrote them.
• People + organizations — every user has a public profile (configurable visibility), every organization has a public-facing page (verified status, credentials, related associations), and the relationships between them — “Ardoor manages Sandalwood,” “Palm Insurance is the carrier of record” — are first-class data, not buried in a contact field.

A board treasurer signs in, sees a Compare view of three roofing proposals her management company shortlisted, accepts one in two clicks, and the platform notifies the winning vendor and the two declined vendors automatically. The selected vendor’s profile gains a completion record visible to other boards. The treasurer’s next session: she reads a CAM-Corner thread on SIRS-driven reserve study cadence, asks a follow-up question tagged with her CFC license number for credibility, and gets a reply from an attorney whose firm represents three associations in her county.

That’s the loop. The forum builds trust, the directory and relationships make people findable, the RFP Hub turns a decision into a record, and the user model means none of it requires anyone to log out and log back in to play a different role.

The platform is free to try during pilot. Create an account and pick the org type that fits — association board member, management company, vendor, attorney, insurance pro. Each path drops you into a workspace shaped to what your role actually does.