A Budget Your Residents Can Actually See
Free for 50 Properties. No Credit Card Required.
Every special assessment fight starts the same way: residents have no idea where the money goes. The budget exists - it is a spreadsheet on the treasurer’s laptop, maybe attached to one email last January - but no homeowner has seen it, so when the board asks for $400 a door to fix the pool, it lands like a surprise tax. The board is not hiding anything. The information just never had a place to live where residents could reach it.
HomeHerald’s Community Budget gives it that place. Build the budget once, share it with one toggle, and every resident sees the plan and how the year is tracking against it.
The Budget Is an Official Record - and a Trust Tool
Florida HB 1203 lists the current annual budget among the official records a 100-plus-parcel association must post in its members-only portal. A PDF in a folder technically satisfies that. A budget residents can read at a glance does something the statute cannot mandate: it builds the trust that prevents the next assessment from turning into a brawl.
HomeHerald treats the budget as both - a compliant record and a living transparency tool.
Build the Budget in Minutes
Open the Budget tab and pick a year. You enter two kinds of lines:
- Planned Income - choose a source (dues, assessments, fines, amenity fees, or other) and an amount, with an optional note
- Planned Expenses - name the line (“Landscaping,” “Pool maintenance,” “Insurance”) and an amount
Totals roll up automatically into income, expenses, and the resulting surplus or deficit. A Board Notes field lets you add context that residents see when the budget is shared.
You do not have to start from a blank page. Pre-fill from last 12 months seeds your expense lines from what the community actually paid out over the past year, and Copy from last year brings forward last year’s budget as a starting point. For most boards, that turns budget season from an evening of spreadsheet wrangling into a few minutes of adjustment.
Share Live, On a Cash Basis
When you are ready, flip Share live budget with residents. A budget widget appears on every resident’s dashboard, titled with the year, and Herald Chat can answer their budget questions directly.
It is not a static snapshot. The widget shows the planned figures next to actuals year to date, on a cash basis - the way a homeowner actually thinks about money. A resident can expand “Landscaping” and see what was budgeted against what has been spent so far this year, with the percent of the year elapsed for context. The plan is fixed when you share it; the actuals update as money moves.
Cash basis is deliberate. Accrual accounting lumps a year of dues into the month they are assessed and confuses every volunteer treasurer and resident who reads it. HomeHerald reports the budget the way people experience their community’s money: what came in, what went out, and what is left.
You Control What Residents See
The budget carries a clear status: Not started, Admins only, or Shared with residents. Nothing reaches residents until you choose to share it, and you can keep a working draft private while you build it. When you share, the published version is preserved as a record even if you later stop sharing - so the budget you posted for the year stays on file.
For the full map of which records HB 1203 requires and where each one lives in HomeHerald, see the Florida HB 1203 compliance guide.
Pricing
Community Budget is included on every HomeHerald plan, including the Free tier (up to 50 properties). No add-on, no per-seat charge.
Free for 50 properties. No credit card. Cancel any time.