Physical Mail

Some residents won’t read email. Some need a formal record on paper. Physical Mail lets HomeHerald send real letters - printed, stuffed, stamped, and mailed by USPS First-Class Mail - without you doing any printing or stuffing. You send letters from the Town Crier (its own line in the admin sidebar, right under Front Desk): pick A letter.

When physical mail makes sense

The legitimate reasons to use a letter instead of (or in addition to) email:

• Residents without email - older homeowners, absentee owners, anyone you can’t reach digitally
• A paper record - a dated letter to the property’s mailing address, logged in HomeHerald
• Escalation gravitas - a real letter says “we’re serious” in a way email can’t

HomeHerald letters go standard First-Class Mail. They are not certified and carry no return receipt. If your bylaws or state law require certified mail for a fine, lien, or other enforcement notice, send that notice yourself through USPS. HomeHerald can produce the letter as a PDF for you to print (see below).

Don’t use it for routine reminders or informational announcements. Email is faster, cheaper, and reaches the same residents.

Setup

There’s no outside account to connect. HomeHerald handles the printing and mailing; you provide the content and recipients.

1. Go to Automate, then Configuration, then Physical Mail, and turn it on
2. Add your HOA’s mailing address under Settings (the Community Settings screen), in HOA Contact Information > Mailing Address. It’s the return address on every envelope, and the Town Crier asks you to add it before a letter can mail
3. Buy letter credits (below)

In the letter itself you’ll also set the signature - the lines that appear after “Sincerely,”. HomeHerald remembers the one you type for next time.

Costs

Letters run on letter credits, bought in bundles on the Physical Mail card (Automate > Configuration):

Bundle	Price	Per letter
25 letters	$50	$2.00
60 letters	$100	$1.67
150 letters	$200	$1.33

Each credit covers printing and standard First-Class postage, one credit per envelope. The receipt on Check and send shows what a send will use before you press Send. Credits are only bought when you buy them - nothing tops up your balance automatically, so check it before a large mailing.

Sending a letter

Three paths.

Path 1 - from a request or violation

When you close a complaint or violation with a warning or a fine, the notice step lets you pick how the notice goes out: In-App, Email, or Official Mail. Pick Official Mail, confirm, and the notice is mailed to the property. Photos attached as evidence print with the letter. The letter is logged on the ticket.

Path 2 - to a group

1. Open the Town Crier and pick A letter
2. Pick a Template (or Blank) and write the letter. Insert a field adds per-home details like the name or the balance; Herald’s draft writes one for you to edit
3. On Who, and how it goes out, answer Who is it for? - Everyone, Late on dues, No payment on file, Pick by hand or One home
4. Answer Whose envelope? - Resident, Billing contact (where a home has one, like a landlord) or Both
5. Answer How should they go out? - Mail them for me or I will print them myself
6. The Who list shows every envelope - the name and where it will mail - before anything goes; take any out you don’t want
7. On Check and send, check the envelope and credit count, then press Send

Useful for community-wide notices that need physical reach (annual meeting, voting reminders to absentee owners).

Path 3 - one letter

1. Open the Town Crier and pick A letter
2. Write the letter
3. On Who is it for?, pick One home and choose it
4. Check the envelope on Check and send, then press Send

The Dues Chaser can also mail letters automatically as one of its steps; see Dues Chaser.

Templates

A Town Crier letter starts from a template:

• Money - Dues reminder, Late notice, Final notice
• Rules and requests - Violation notice, Violation second notice, Hearing notice, ARC decision, ARC not approved
• Community - Welcome, Welcome to HomeHerald, Meeting notice
• Start fresh - Blank

Each template picks the usual envelope for you (dues letters and Welcome to HomeHerald go to the Billing contact; violation, hearing, ARC and meeting letters go to Both; the rest to the Resident), and you can change it. Fields like the name, the balance and the deadline fill in for each home; a field you still need to fill shows yellow until you do. Edit a template and Save as my own to keep your version for next time.

What the resident receives

Letters arrive in real envelopes with:

• The date
• The body of the letter
• “Sincerely,” and your signer’s name
• A join QR code, if you turned it on
• Return address: the HOA’s mailing address

Standard First-Class Mail usually takes 3-7 business days.

Tracking

Every letter you send is listed in the Front Desk’s Sent lens, under Through Send. Open one to see each envelope’s status as it comes back from the mail provider (Sending to print, Sent to print, Delivered, Failed), and Re-download the PDF. Letters sent before the Town Crier are under Sent > Before Send. Letters also appear in the property’s correspondence history.

The tracking record shows the letter was produced and entered the mail. It is not a signature or proof of receipt.

Common situations

”Resident says they didn’t receive the letter”

Check the letter’s status. If it shows it was processed for delivery, it entered the mail; confirm the address on the property record matches where the resident actually gets mail, and resend if it doesn’t.

”The letter went to the wrong address”

Letters go to the address on the resident’s property record. Possible causes:

• Address typo on the property record
• Resident has a P.O. box and physical address differs

Update the address on the property and resend.

”We need to send the same letter to all 200 properties”

Send A letter from the Town Crier to Everyone (path 2 above). That uses one credit per envelope - 200 for 200 homes, more if you pick Both; see the Physical Mail card for current pack prices.

The larger bundles cost less per letter, so a community that mails in volume should buy the 150-letter bundle.

”We don’t want to use Physical Mail - we’ll print our own letters”

Fine. Just don’t turn on Physical Mail. You’ll send letters the old-fashioned way (print, stuff, stamp). The Town Crier can still produce the letters for you: write it, pick I will print them myself, and you get one PDF with a page per envelope, each addressed for a window envelope. No credits.

”How much should we budget?”

Rough estimate: 1-2 letters per property per year for routine HOAs, 3-5 per “active enforcement” property. For a 100-property community: 100-500 letters/year at $1.33-$2.00 a letter = roughly $133-$1,000/year on letters.

A community in active enforcement should budget closer to the upper end. The cost-per-violation is small but adds up.

Where to go next

• Issuing a fine - when fines need formal notice
• Escalations and repeat offenders - escalation tiers and which require letters
• Announcements - for community-wide notices in the app
• Integrations - managing Physical Mail and other connected services