Getting Started

Starting without a spreadsheet

You don't need a roster in hand to start. Explore a sample community first, then choose whether your real community starts empty or with practice data you can edit and clear whenever you're ready.

Last updated September 25, 2026

Most boards arrive with a spreadsheet. Plenty don’t - the roster lives in a filing cabinet, in the last treasurer’s email, or nowhere anyone can find on a Tuesday night. You can still start.

Explore a sample community first

Try for free on homeherald.ai opens a box that says Drop your spreadsheet here. Underneath it, No spreadsheet handy? sits next to a Start without a file button. That takes you to the app’s start page, where there’s a quieter link:

No spreadsheet handy? Explore a sample community instead

Click that and HomeHerald opens a fully populated sample community - properties, residents, balances, the ledger, violations, bookings, the whole admin app. Every screen is live and nothing is saved. It isn’t a slideshow or a set of screenshots; you’re clicking around the real product with someone else’s data in it.

Two things worth doing while you’re in there:

  • Let Herald show you around. Herald offers a narrated, spoken tour (it asks before it starts, since it talks and listens), and Let Herald show you around in the banner at the top starts it whenever you want.
  • Break things. Nothing you do in the sample community is written anywhere, and you can’t damage a real community from inside it.

When you’ve seen enough, Start your free trial in the same banner takes you to activation.

Choosing how your community starts

Activation asks for your community name, your street address (optional), your community’s size, and whether to start with or without a card. If you came in without a spreadsheet, it also asks:

How should your community start?

  • Start empty - a clean community with no properties in it. This is the default.
  • Start with practice data - your community is created with editable sample records already in it.

Either way you get the same real community on the same 14-day free trial, with 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 any point 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.

Boards who upload a spreadsheet never see this question. Their roster is already decided, and it imports as soon as the trial starts.

What practice data actually is

Practice records are real, editable records in your real community - not a demo mode you toggle off. They’re drawn from the sample community you just explored, so it’s the same streets and the same neighbors, with every way of reaching anyone stripped out.

What you get:

  • A property roster with addresses, lot numbers, and balances
  • Recent payments posted against those properties, so the dashboards, AR aging, and cash-basis reports have something in them

What you deliberately don’t get:

  • No contact details. No email addresses, no phone numbers, no mailing addresses, no billing contacts. This is the point: your automations are pointed at this community for real, and a practice record has to have no way of being reached.
  • No documents, covenants, amenities, or operating expenses. Only records that clearing the roster can take back out again are seeded in the first place.

The “Practice data” chip

While your community still carries practice records, admins and board members see a small amber Practice data chip just under the community name - in the desktop sidebar and in the mobile header. Residents never see it.

It’s a reminder, not a restriction. Everything works normally underneath it.

Clearing practice data

Replacing the roster is how practice data ends. Go to Properties in the admin sidebar, open AI Import, upload your real roster, and pick Replace everything. The practice properties and the financial records attached to them are deleted, your real roster lands, and the chip disappears.

Full walkthrough, including the confirmations that stand in the way: Importing your property roster.

You can also just leave them. Practice records behave like any other property, so you can edit them into your real roster one at a time if your community is small enough that a spreadsheet was never going to be worth it.

Where to go next