A Blockman Alternative for Small Residential Blocks
4 July 2026 · 6 min read
Blockman, from Topfloor Systems, has been a UK fixture since 2011. It is a serious service charge accounting and administration platform: demands across multiple lease schedules, expenditure tracked against budgets, BACS supplier payments, and per-block trial balances and P&L reports. For the person doing a block's books, it is genuinely capable.
What Blockman does well
- Deep, industry-specific service charge accounting.
- Mostly non-modular — features included rather than bolted on.
- BACS payments and detailed per-block financial reporting.
- An optional resident portal, MyBlockman, as a paid add-on.
When it is the wrong size
Blockman is fundamentally an accounting tool. If your block already has an accountant or bookkeeper, paying for a full accounting platform plus a separate portal add-on just to handle resident communication is paying for the wrong thing. Volunteer directors rarely need balance sheets — they need residents to receive notices and decisions to be recorded so they hold up later.
The lighter alternative
CommonCouncil leaves the books to your accountant and focuses on the front door of the building: announcements, recorded votes, a shared document library, and AI email ingestion for forwarded contractor emails. No setup fee, no migration project, free during early access. Read the CommonCouncil vs Blockman comparison to see where each one wins.