Inviting residents

This is usually the part admins worry about most. It’s actually the easy part - once your property roster is loaded, getting residents linked is mostly a matter of picking one of two flows and announcing it.

Faster than either flow below: if your roster already has emails or phone numbers on it, Invite everyone sends each person their own link that claims their home for them, with nothing to approve afterwards. See Inviting everyone at once. The two flows below are what the invite sits on top of, and what catches everyone it could not reach.

The two flows

Flow	How it works	Best for
Open join code	You share a code; anyone with it can sign up and pick their home	Most communities, especially if you don’t have everyone’s email
Pre-approval	Put people on the roster with an email or a phone; matching signups join their household with no approval step	Communities with a clean owner contact list and high accuracy needs

You can use both at once. Pre-approve the residents you have emails for; let the rest come in through the join code.

Flow 1 - Open join code

This is the default. Easy for residents, and most of them never need you to approve anything.

How it works for the resident

1. They open the HomeHerald app (or Sign in on homeherald.ai), choose Join an Existing Community, and create their account
2. They enter the join code for your community. Their account is active right away.
3. They pick their property:
   • An unclaimed home - they claim it and they’re in.
   • A home someone already claimed - they tap I live here too (or I’m purchasing this home), see a Waiting for Approval screen, and the resident already there approves them into the household (or, for a purchase, confirms the sale).

How to share the join code

Find your code under Members in the admin sidebar - the page header has a Community Join Code hero card. It’s six letters and numbers, e.g. FRK4W9.

Share it via:

• Community email blast
• Newsletter or HOA bulletin
• A flyer left at each door (effective for older communities)
• Posted on the community Facebook group

Approving pending residents

App signups with the join code don’t come to you. The Members (admin sidebar) → Pending Approvals ({n}) panel holds the few that do - people who joined by texting the code to the Herald line, and older signups left pending. See Approving pending residents. For each:

1. Confirm the address they picked is correct (sometimes they pick the wrong unit)
2. Confirm the name is someone you’d expect
3. Click Approve

They get access right away.

If something looks wrong, click Reject. There’s no reason field and no email - the person simply can’t get into the community afterwards - so reach out to them directly if it was a mix-up.

When to regenerate the code

The join code is permanent unless you change it. Reasons to regenerate:

• It got posted somewhere public it shouldn’t have been (Facebook leak)
• A bad actor is using it to spam signups
• You want to “close” the community (regenerate, don’t share, only invite by email)

Click the regenerate icon on the Community Join Code card in Members, then confirm in the Regenerate Join Code? dialog. This invalidates the old code immediately. Anyone who already used the old code is unaffected - they’re already in.

Flow 2 - Pre-approval from your roster

This is for communities that want signups to auto-approve when the email or phone matches a known resident.

How it works

HomeHerald derives the pre-approved list from the people already on each property. When someone signs up with an email or phone that matches one of those records and picks that property, they’re approved automatically - you don’t have to click anything.

Setting it up

You pre-approve someone by adding them to the property:

1. Go to Properties in the admin sidebar
2. Click the property, then Modify
3. Under Residents & contacts, click Add person (or Add resident in the Household section) and enter a name with an email, a phone, or both
4. Save

There is no separate pre-approved list to maintain. Anyone on the property with an email or phone who has not claimed the home yet is pre-approved automatically, and the entry drops off the list the moment they sign up.

For bulk pre-approval (the more common case):

1. Make sure your roster import included an Owner Email or Owner Phone column, and Tenant Email / Tenant Phone for a second person (see import guide)
2. After import, every one of those people is pre-approved for their property automatically, by email and by phone

What the resident experience looks like

If a resident signs up with a pre-approved email and picks the matching property:

• They join the household with no approval step, even if someone already claimed the home
• They see their property and any existing balance

If they sign up with a non-matching email or pick the wrong property:

• They follow the open flow: claim the home if it’s unclaimed, or wait for the household to approve them if it isn’t

This is a “fast lane plus fallback” model - you get speed when the data lines up, and a safety net when it doesn’t.

Handling the messy middle

In practice, most communities have:

• Some owners with known emails (pre-approve these)
• Some owners with no email on file (open join code is their only path)
• Some owners who never log in at all (you’ll handle these manually - see below)

“We don’t have an email for some owners”

Two options:

1. Send physical mail. If you have a mailing address (you do - it’s the property), send a letter with the join code. Invite everyone lists these people under Letter only and hands them to Formal Letters with the welcome template, which mails standard first class once Physical Mail is turned on (Configuration → Physical Mail).
2. Skip them for now. Their property still exists in the system, dues still post, balances still accrue. They just can’t see the portal until they sign up. You can manually record any payments they send by check under Transactions in the admin sidebar.

”An owner refuses to use the software”

Their property still works fine without a linked resident. Dues and fines accrue as normal. The board can still send mailed letters via the Physical Mail integration, and any payments they send by check are recorded manually.

The system doesn’t require every property to have an active resident - just don’t be surprised when their balance grows and you have to chase them by traditional means.

Co-residents (households)

When a primary resident is approved, their spouse / partner / family members can be added as co-residents:

• A resident invites them with Invite a household member on their home page, OR
• An admin opens the person under Members and links them to the property with Add as additional resident (they need an account first)

Co-residents share visibility into the property’s balance and requests. They don’t get their own balance - there’s only one ledger per property.

Where to go next

• Inviting everyone at once - one button, one signed link per person on the roster
• Inviting your board - same flow with elevated permissions
• Configuring dues - once residents are in, they need to be able to pay
• Linking residents to a property - manual linking and edge cases