Cash accounts

Every dollar your HOA collects, spends, or refunds belongs to a real cash bucket. The Operating checking account. The Reserve savings account. Maybe a CD. Maybe petty cash. Cash accounts in Home Herald are how the system tracks which bucket each transaction belongs to, so the live balance per account matches your real bank statement and month end reconciliation works.

Where to find it

Manage > Accounts in the admin sidebar.

You’ll see a table with one row per account, showing the name, kind, bank details (if entered), opening balance, and live current balance. The first time you visit, the system has likely auto-created an “Operating Account” for you, so it can route transactions somewhere sensible from day one.

The four kinds

When you add or edit an account, you pick a kind:

• Operating is your primary checking account. Dues come in, day to day vendor bills go out. Most HOAs have exactly one.
• Reserve is the long term savings account, typically for capital improvements (roof replacement, road repaving, pool resurfacing).
• Petty Cash is rare for HOAs. Use it if you have a small physical cash float.
• Other is the catch all. CDs, money market accounts, second checking, anything that holds money but doesn’t fit the first three.

Stripe and PayPal are intentionally not in the list. They’re payment methods, not cash buckets. When residents pay via Stripe, the money lands in your Operating account on the charge date (Stripe’s actual payout to your bank lags by 2 business days, but that’s small enough to not need its own account in the books).

Setting up your first account

The first time you visit Manage > Accounts, you’ll likely see an auto created “Operating Account” with a $0 opening balance.

1. Click the pencil icon to edit it.
2. Update the name to match what you call it (“BoA Checking - x4521” works well).
3. Enter the bank name and the last 4 digits of the account number (these are for your reference, not for any electronic linking).
4. Set the opening balance and as of date. Use the balance from a bank statement on a clean date (typically the last month end before you started using Home Herald).
5. Save.

Repeat for any other accounts you have. Reserve fund? Add it. CD? Add it (kind Other).

Adding more accounts

Click Add Account at the top right of the table.

The form asks for the same fields: name, kind, bank, last 4, opening balance, opening balance date, optional notes. Save creates the account.

Live balance

The Current Balance column updates whenever a new transaction is recorded. The math is straightforward:

Opening Balance + Sum of all cash impacts on this account = Current Balance

Cash impacts include resident payments in, expenses out, refunds out, processing fees out, and any inter account transfers. Charges (DUES, FINE, ASSESSMENT, BOOKING_FEE) don’t affect cash balance because they’re accounts receivable, not cash. They show up on the property ledger and the AR Aging report.

Account Integrity Audit

At the top of Manage > Accounts, expand the Account Integrity Audit panel. Click Re-run Audit. The system checks:

• Every cash event has an accountId tagged. Records missing one count as an issue.
• Every paid expense has an accountId tagged.
• Inter account transfer pairs balance to zero (if you’ve recorded any transfers).
• Sum of account balances equals sum of all cash impacts.

A green “Clean” chip means your books are mathematically consistent. An amber “Issues” chip means something needs attention, and the panel will tell you exactly what.

If you have legacy data from before Home Herald started tagging cash events to accounts, click Run Account Backfill (super admin only). This stamps every untagged historical record with your default Operating account. Idempotent and safe to re-run.

Inter account transfers

When you move money between two of your accounts (year end Operating to Reserve sweep, for example), click Transfer at the top right of the table.

The modal asks for source account, destination account, amount, date, and an optional description. On Save, the system writes a paired transfer record: outflow on the source, matching inflow on the destination, sharing a transfer group ID. Your account balances move equal and opposite. Resident balances aren’t affected (transfers are bank to bank, not on anyone’s ledger).

Deactivating an account

Closed your old checking account? Click the Power icon on its row to deactivate it. Inactive accounts:

• Stay in the database with their full transaction history (so the audit trail is preserved).
• Show with reduced opacity in the table.
• Don’t appear in dropdowns when adding new transactions.
• Are excluded from the live cash position summary.

You can reactivate any time with the same Power icon.

Where each transaction shows up

Once you have accounts set up, every cash event in the system shows which account it touched. On Manage > Transactions, each row has a colored chip (“OPERATING”, “RESERVE”, etc.) next to the description. You can also filter the transactions list by account using the dropdown at the top.

What “system default” means

One account in your community is marked as the system default. New transactions written by the system without an explicit account selection (Stripe webhook payments, automated dues, manual payment recording without a deposit-to picker) route to this account.

By default, the system default is the auto created Operating account. You can rename or update it freely (changing the bank name, last 4, opening balance) but if you create new accounts you should leave the default flag on the one that represents your primary checking.

What’s next

With accounts set up:

• See your live cash position any time on Manage > Dashboard (top right of the hero card).
• Categorized financial reports are at Manage > Reports (Profit & Loss, AR Aging, AP Aging).
• Month end reconciliation against your bank statement is per account, accessed from the Reconcile button on each row of the Accounts table.