First-day setup checklist

This is the order to do things in. Skip ahead at your own peril - a few of these depend on the previous step.

Plan on 30-60 minutes for the whole thing. The longest single step is usually waiting for Stripe verification, which is mostly hands-off.

Before you start

Have these ready:

• A property roster - addresses, lot numbers if you use them, and the monthly (or annual) dues amount per property. A spreadsheet (Excel or CSV) is cleanest, and it’s what the signup page takes. Once you’re in, AI Import also reads a PDF or a phone photo of a printed list. Don’t have one at all? Start without a spreadsheet and add the roster later.
• Your HOA’s logo - PNG or JPG, square-ish, transparent background ideal but not required.
• Your HOA’s bank account info - for Stripe payouts. Routing + account number.
• A list of board members - names and email addresses.
• How residents will get in - a personal invite to everyone on your roster, the community join code (people claim their own home; someone joining a home already claimed waits for that household to approve them), or both. You can regenerate the code any time.

The checklist

Each item links to the deeper article when one exists. Inside the app, a Getting Started item at the top of the admin sidebar walks you through the same setup one step at a time, and disappears once everything is done or skipped.

1. Sign up and create your community

Go to homeherald.ai and click Try for free. A box opens that says Drop your spreadsheet here - drop your roster in (Excel or CSV), click See your community, and HomeHerald builds a working preview of your own community out of it before you’ve created anything. No spreadsheet on hand? Click Start without a file, then No spreadsheet handy? Explore a sample community instead to look around a populated one first.

Either way, Start your free trial is the exit: name your community, pick your size, create your account, and you’re the first admin. The community starts on a 14-day free trial - no credit card needed, and nothing to cancel when it ends. That trial covers the whole app and every automation; the Herald phone line and your community website switch on when you add a card. Add a card at activation or whenever you’re ready and a full 30-day free trial of Automate starts. The plan charges nothing until that card trial ends, and you can cancel before then and pay nothing. (Your community’s own local number is a one-time $5 when you unlock it.)

If you came in without a spreadsheet, activation also asks How should your community start? - Start empty or Start with practice data. See Starting without a spreadsheet.

2. Set basic community info

Settings → Community Settings.

Fill in:

• Community name and logo (under Community Branding - this is what residents see)
• Contact email - shown to residents as the way to reach the board. Use a shared address (board@yourhoa.com) if you have one.
• Contact phone (optional)
• Mailing address (used as the return address on mailed letters)
• Community location - the state your community is in, so Herald applies the right state’s HOA laws

Don’t bother with amenities yet - we’ll do that after the property roster is in.

3. Import your property roster

Importing your property roster →

If your roster came in with you at signup, it’s already there and you can skip this step.

Otherwise: Properties in the admin sidebar, then AI Import - a fresh community shows a Bring in your roster card with an Open AI Import button, and after that it’s behind Add. Upload a spreadsheet, a PDF, or a photo of a printed list. Herald reads it and shows you a preview. Review, fix any mis-parsed rows, confirm. Done.

This creates a Property record for every line in your roster. After this, the rest of the system has something to attach to.

4. Configure dues

Settings → Community Settings → Dues & Assessments panel.

Configuring dues →

Click + Add Assessment / Dues and set:

• Name (e.g. Base Dues)
• Amount
• Frequency: monthly or annual
• Due day (and due month, for annual dues)
• Late After (days) and Late Fee: how many days past due before a flat late fee applies. Leave them blank for no late fee.
• Apply to all properties, or assign the assessment to specific ones

Then decide how the charges post. Turn on Apply assessments automatically when due and each charge posts on its due date. Leave it off and charges post only when you apply them yourself from the assessment.

5. Connect Stripe (so residents can pay)

Enabling Stripe payments →

Settings → Community Settings → Payment Methods panel. Click Add Method, add Credit Card & Bank (ACH), then click Connect Bank Account. (The same button is under My Herald Account.)

Stripe onboarding is ~10 minutes. You’ll need your HOA’s EIN (or SSN if it’s individually held) and a bank account for payouts. Until Stripe finishes verifying, the panel shows Setup Incomplete with a Resume Setup button.

You can skip this step temporarily - residents just won’t be able to pay online until it’s done. Don’t ship your community without it for long.

6. Invite your board

Inviting your board →

Settings in the admin sidebar → the HOA Management Team card.

• Already signed up as a resident? Click Add Team Member, search for them, pick Board Member or Admin, give them a title (Treasurer, President, etc.), and click Add to Team.
• Not in HomeHerald yet? Click Send direct invite link to new Board Member, enter their email, and click Send invite. They get a single-use link, good for 7 days, and join as a Board Member when they accept it with that email. They then pick their home the same way any resident does.

7. Invite everyone

Inviting residents →

Members in the admin sidebar → the Residents & contacts tab → Invite everyone.

This is the day-one path. Every owner, tenant, and billing contact on your roster gets their own personal link - by email where you have an email, by text where you have a phone number and your community can send texts. The link claims their home for them, so nobody lands in the pending-approval queue and there’s nothing for you to approve afterwards. Links are good for 30 days.

The modal shows you the whole list before anything goes out, grouped by how you can reach each person. Anyone who already has an account, or who was already invited, is listed with the reason and can’t be checked - so the counts never flatter you. People with no email and no phone show up under Letter only; nothing is sent to them from here, and the modal hands them off to Formal Letters with the welcome template.

Afterwards, a strip at the top of Residents & contacts keeps score:

Invited 84 of 96 · 61 joined · 23 still out

Still out means invited and still no account. When that number stops moving on its own, Resend to the 23 sends only to those people, and nobody who already joined gets pestered.

Roster with no contact details? Then the join code is your fallback: share it, residents sign up and pick their own property, and you approve each one before they get access. Most communities end up doing both - invite everyone you can reach, leave the code open for the stragglers.

8. Decide on automations (or skip for now)

Configuration (under Automate in the admin sidebar).

You can leave all of these off on day one and turn them on once you’ve gotten comfortable. The big ones:

• Dues Chaser - auto-reminders for overdue residents. Worth turning on within the first week.
• Herald Shield - AI-assisted violation escalation. Leave off until you’ve handled a few violations manually first.
• Herald Chat - the resident-facing assistant. It’s always on and answers from your CC&Rs, bylaws, and community documents, so it gets better as you add them.

9. Verify it works

Send yourself a test by:

1. Opening an incognito window and signing up as a resident with a test email
2. Joining the community via the join code
3. Approving yourself from the admin side
4. Confirming you can see the property’s balance and the dues charge

If that works, you’re live. Tell your residents.

What you don’t need to do on day one

These can wait - don’t let them block your launch:

• Amenities & bookings - add them when you’re ready to enforce reservations
• Physical Mail (physical letters) - only if you mail notices or letters
• AI knowledge base - useful for Herald Chat, but optional
• Apple Pay - residents get it in the HomeHerald iPhone app once card payments are live; the web checkout doesn’t offer it

Where to go next

• How HomeHerald is organized - if you haven’t read the mental-model article, do it now
• How the ledger works - once dues start posting, you’ll want to understand the financial side

Stuck on any step? Click HomeHerald Support at the bottom of the admin sidebar, or email support@homeherald.ai, with the step number and what you’re seeing.