Best Service Charge Software UK in 2026

The best service charge software depends on who you are. RTM directors and self-managing buildings usually want transparent pricing, a modern interface, and strong S.20 and S.20B workflows, where Brocade fits well. Mid-sized managing agents with mature accounting needs may prefer Resident or Blocks Online. If you already manage lettings and blocks together, Arthur makes sense. The mistake to avoid is picking a general property management tool and hoping the leasehold side will catch up.

At minimum, it should let you issue and store the Stage 1 Notice of Intention, track the 30-day observation window, log leaseholder responses, issue the Stage 2 Notice of Estimates, and produce an auditable record of the full consultation. Ideally it also links the final contract to the demand raised against leaseholders, so the S.20 evidence and the money sit together. Many general property management tools treat S.20 as a document-storage problem, which is where disputes start.

Section 20B of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 bars you from recovering service charge costs that were incurred more than 18 months before you demanded them or served a Section 20B notice. If your software does not age invoices against demands, you can quietly lose the right to recover real costs. Look for a dashboard that flags invoices approaching the 18-month limit and links them to the demand that covered them, not just a general ledger.

If the RTM company is self-managing, yes. Running S.20, S.20B, and year-end accounts in a spreadsheet works until it does not, and the failure mode is usually a First-tier Tribunal challenge. If the RTM has handed day-to-day management to a managing agent, the agent usually provides the software, but RTM directors should still have read-only visibility into demands, payments, and compliance, which a proper leaseholder portal provides.

Pricing varies widely, and only some vendors publish it. Brocade publishes £49 per month per building plus £2.50 per unit. Service Charge Sorted publishes its Blockcare 300 tier at £630 per year, with higher Ringley tiers from £5,000 and £10,000 per year. Arthur publishes tiered pricing aimed at letting agents, and Fixflo publishes pricing for its repairs product rather than for service charges. Resident, BlockPro, Blocks Online, and MosaicGT do not publish pricing and require a sales conversation. We have not estimated figures for the platforms that keep pricing private, because a guessed number is worse than no number. Transparent pricing is a useful filter when you are a small RTM or a growing agent and do not want to sit through a sales call just to rule a platform out.

You can handle the bookkeeping side, but general accounting software does not know about S.20 consultations, S.20B demand ageing, RICS budget categories, or leaseholder portal obligations. Most UK managers who try this end up running Xero alongside spreadsheets for the leasehold-specific bits, which is where errors creep in. A dedicated service charge platform covers the compliance surface that Xero does not.

It does not have to be, but it is increasingly useful. Under the Building Safety Act, the costs of building safety work flow through the service charge, and leaseholders now have stronger rights to see how their money is being spent. Platforms that link the demand to the underlying obligation (the FRA action, the scheduled check, the warranty claim) give you a cleaner audit trail and a more defensible position if a cost is challenged.

On 15 July 2026 the government published its response to the Strengthening leaseholder protections over charges and services consultation, setting out how it will implement Part 4 of the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024. It confirmed a standardised service charge demand form, an annual report on building condition and planned major works, a prescribed list of documents landlords must provide on request going back six years, and reformed litigation cost rules. None of it is in force yet. Statutory Instruments are still to be laid and leaseholders "will start to see changes during 2027". Software with a real leaseholder portal, rather than a PDF download link, will make these duties routine instead of a project.

No commencement date has been set. The 15 July 2026 government response says Statutory Instruments will be laid "as soon as possible" and that private landlords will get 12 months notice of the measures and social landlords 24 months. Treat the 12 month notice period as your real planning horizon rather than 2027, because the clock starts when the instruments are laid. The initial demand must be accompanied by an annual budget for the block that compares against the previous accounting period, so budget-to-demand linkage is the capability to check for now.

Yes. Fixflo shipped a Section 20 major-works consultation workspace on 3 July 2026, with structured workflows, fee visibility, date-stamped record-keeping, and consultation stages that lock in sequence. It is a real capability and the first move of its kind by a repairs-led platform. Read the boundary carefully though: Section 20 consultation is major-works process compliance, not service charge accounting, so it does not produce demands, budgets, or year-end reconciliation.