Our Biggest Launch Ever, and Every Piece Came From a Board Member

I did not start HomeHerald to build software. I started it because I was on an HOA board, drowning in the same evening that every volunteer board member knows: the violation that needed a letter, the dues nobody had paid, the resident asking for the third time whether they could paint their door, and a spreadsheet that was somehow both the source of truth and completely out of date.

So I built the thing I needed. And then something happened that has shaped every release since: other board members found it, started using it, and started telling me what they needed.

This is the biggest release HomeHerald has ever shipped. And I want to be honest about where it came from, because it is the whole point. I did not sit in a room and dream up a roadmap. Every feature below started as a board member, somewhere, saying “I wish it could do this.” You can read the full list on our What’s New page. Here is the story behind it.

We do not have a roadmap committee. We have you.

Most software companies decide what to build in a strategy meeting. We decide what to build by reading the messages board members send us, in the app, every day. Someone hits a wall, tells us about it, and more often than not it becomes the next thing we ship. That feedback loop is the actual product. The code is just how we close it.

So when this release came together, it was not a grand plan. It was a backlog of “I wish it could do this,” finally caught up with. Let me walk you through it.

”Show my residents the budget.”

A treasurer told us their annual meeting always turned into a fight about money, because the only time anyone saw the budget was when it was read aloud once a year. So we built the Community Budget. The board builds the plan, shares it, and every resident gets a live budget card on their dashboard - planned versus actual spending to date, on a cash basis, updated as the money moves. Any day of the year, a homeowner can see where the community stands and whether you are over or under budget. The special assessment stops being a surprise.

”I need to prove we noticed the meeting.”

A board president had a dues increase challenged months later, on the claim that the meeting was never properly noticed. They knew they had posted it. They could not prove when. So Official Meetings now stamp the exact moment a notice goes up and show residents how many days before the meeting it was posted. The proof is automatic.

”We cannot lose the insurance again.”

When a board turns over, the insurance policy often leaves with the outgoing treasurer, sitting in a personal inbox nobody can reach. One lapse later, a board found out the hard way. So we built the Insurance register, where every policy lives with its certificate and a traffic-light chip that flags a renewal long before it is due.

”Where are the bids?”

A homeowner asked to see the bids for a roofing project, and the board realized those bids had been texted to one person and never written down. Contracts and Bids now keeps active agreements on file and logs competitive bids grouped by project, with the lowest flagged. The whole board, and the community, can see what was signed and what it cost.

”Stop making residents email us for the same documents.”

Boards were spending real time forwarding the same CC&R PDF and the same meeting minutes, over and over. So everything - governing documents, minutes, budgets, insurance, contracts - now lives in one searchable, members-only Documents hub. Residents find what they need themselves, behind login, in seconds.

”Florida just made us put our records online.”

A Florida board told us about HB 1203, the new law requiring associations with 100 or more parcels to post their official records in a members-only website. We realized HomeHerald was already most of the way there - the records just needed a single home behind the login residents already use. Now it is a compliance story we can tell in one page, and the same transparency helps boards in every state.

”Our units do not all pay the same dues.”

Condos next to townhomes, some residents opting into services others skip, capital projects coming due - one flat fee never fit. So dues became itemized: build an assessment once and apply it to every property or just the units that need it, with late fees and a clear, itemized resident ledger.

”Let me reconcile the bank without QuickBooks.”

Treasurers kept asking for the parts of QuickBooks they actually used. So we shipped month-end bank reconciliation with a live diff that counts down to zero, plus AR Aging, AP Aging, and a Budget vs Actual report you can run for any date range and export.

”Sometimes I just need to talk to a human.”

And when a board hits a wall with HomeHerald itself, they wanted a real reply, not a ticket number into a void. So in-app Support is a two-way conversation with our team, and when we respond, the app makes sure you see it. That thread, by the way, is where a lot of this release came from.

This is what self-managed software should be

There is a particular kind of software that gets built when the people writing it are also the people using it. It does not chase the features that demo well. It chases the small, unglamorous problems that actually eat a volunteer’s evening: the lapsed policy, the lost bid, the budget nobody can see, the meeting nobody can prove was noticed.

Every one of those problems came to us from a board member who was living it. That is not a tagline. It is how the whole thing gets made.

If you are running a self-managed HOA, two things are true. First, HomeHerald can probably take a real chunk of work off your plate today, free for up to 50 properties. And second, the next feature we build is probably your idea - you just have not sent it to us yet.

See everything we shipped on the What’s New page, or start free and tell us what is eating your evenings. We are listening, and we build fast.

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Built by a board president, for self-managed boards. Free for up to 50 properties, no credit card required.