Glossary

This is a quick-reference glossary of every term that matters in HomeHerald. If you’re reading another handbook article and a word doesn’t click, the definition is here.

Core entities

Community - Your HOA itself. The top of the data tree. Everything else lives inside one community.

Property - A lot, unit, or townhome in your community. The unit of record - dues, fines, and balances attach to it. Residents are linked to it but don’t own its balance. See Properties are the unit of record.

User - A person with a HomeHerald account in your community. Has a role (Resident, Board Member, or Admin) and is linked to one or more properties.

Resident - A user with the Resident role. Sees their own property, balance, requests, bookings.

Board Member - A user with the Board Member role. Has admin access to manage the community.

Admin - A user with the highest tier of access: everything a Board Member can do, plus the admin-only controls such as adding or removing people on the management team and changing someone’s role.

Primary resident - The main contact for a property. One per property. Has full access to that property’s data.

Co-resident - An additional resident linked to the same property as a primary. Sees and can act on the same data as the primary (within the property’s scope).

Household - Informal term for the group of residents linked to a single property (primary + co-residents).

Contact on file - A person record kept on a property: name, optional email and phone, and a role (Owner, Tenant, or Other). No account required and no portal access. Managed under Members > Residents & contacts or in the property editor, where each row shows whether it has been claimed by an account yet. See Residents and contacts on a property.

Billing contact - A contact on file flagged to receive the property’s dues and billing notices instead of the resident. One per property. Built for rentals where the owner pays the dues but the tenant lives in the home.

Claimed - A property is claimed when a resident with an account holds it. Claiming is what connects an account to a home; adding contacts on file never claims a property.

Claimed (badge) - Shown on a person under Residents & contacts once an account is linked to that row, matched on email or phone. Rows with no account yet read Not yet claimed. A claimed row means the account and the roster record are one person; it does not by itself make them the property’s resident.

Financial entities

Ledger - The list of every financial transaction tied to your community. Sometimes called “transaction log.”

Financial Record - A single line entry in the ledger. Can be a charge, a payment, a credit, or a refund.

Dues - Recurring charges (monthly or annual) from the assessments you set up under Settings > Dues & Assessments. Each assessment applies to every property or only the ones you assign, and posts automatically on its due date when Apply assessments automatically when due is on.

Fine - A penalty assessed for a rule violation. Charged to the property, not the resident.

Special Assessment - A one-time charge to all (or a subset of) properties for a specific purpose, e.g., a roof replacement fund.

Booking Fee - A rental fee for using an amenity (clubhouse, pool, pavilion).

Cleaning Deposit - A hold placed on the resident’s card about a day before an amenity booking. The board can forfeit (capture) it after inspection; otherwise the hold drops off on its own.

Late Fee - Charged when dues go past the assessment’s Late After (days) window. Configured as a flat dollar amount on each assessment.

Initial Balance - The carryover balance from a previous system, set on a property at import time. Affects the property’s total balance going forward.

Credit - A reduction in the property’s balance, usually given for a waived fee or payment in advance. Lives in the ledger as a credit-type entry.

Refund - Money returned to a resident, reversing a payment they made. Through Stripe for online payments; recorded by hand for anything paid offline.

Requests and enforcement

Request - A general term for any work item flowing through the community: general question, ARC, complaint, or neighborhood request.

General - A request type for questions, suggestions, or board correspondence that doesn’t fit other types.

ARC - Architectural Review Committee request. A request for board approval of a property change.

Complaint - A specific request type for reporting a covenant violation by a resident.

Neighborhood Request - A community-wide concern or request about shared spaces, often published to the community board.

Violation - A confirmed covenant breach. Often results in a fine.

Enforcement - The process of escalating violations through tiers (warning, formal warning, fine).

Escalation Step - A step in the enforcement ladder. Each step has an offense number, action, and configuration.

Fine Mode - On a fine-action escalation step: Auto-Fine & Close applies the fine, closes the ticket, and alerts the resident; Flag for Review queues it for an admin to decide.

Grace Period - The buffer time between when something is due (dues, violation resolution) and when penalties apply.

Status (request) - The lifecycle stage: New → Acknowledged → Under Investigation → Closed. See The request lifecycle.

Amenities

Amenity / Asset - Community-owned shared resources: pool, gym, pavilion, parking, clubhouse, etc. Bookable by residents.

Booking - A reservation of an amenity for a specific time / date. Has its own status lifecycle (Pending → Approved → Completed, with possible Rejected / Cancelled / Charge-failed states).

Approval workflow - The flow for amenities that require admin sign-off before a booking is confirmed.

Capacity - The maximum number of guests / occupants for an amenity.

Communications

Announcement - A community-wide message sent in-app, by email, by push, or some combination.

Email Inbox - The shared admin email inbox where resident emails arrive and admins reply, once Email Integration is connected.

Physical Mail letter - A physical letter sent via the Physical Mail integration. Letters go standard First-Class mail, not certified; notices your governing documents or state law require by certified mail go through USPS or your attorney.

Automations

Dues Chaser - The automation that sends escalating reminders to residents with overdue dues.

Herald Shield - The AI agent that helps handle violations - auto-dismissing no-violation cases and proposing escalation actions for confirmed ones.

Herald Chat - The AI chatbot that answers resident questions in the portal.

Settings

Community settings - HOA-level configuration: name, logo, mailing address, contact email/phone, community location, dues and assessments, payment methods.

Plan - Your HomeHerald subscription: Automate, the whole platform, including the Herald phone line, your community’s own local number, resident texting and a community website, from $65/month. Over 400 properties or more than one community? Contact us through the pricing page. Prices are set by how many properties your community has. Every new community starts on a 14-day free trial of Automate with no credit card; adding a card starts a full 30-day free trial on Automate. The phone line, your own number, and the community website need a card on file, and your own number is a one-time $5 when you unlock it. See Plan and billing.

Pre-approved emails and phones - The emails and phone numbers of people on a property who have not claimed it yet. HomeHerald keeps the list in step with those records automatically; a sign-up matching either one auto-approves onto that home.

AI knowledge base - The configured sources (external websites, indexed announcements, indexed neighborhood requests) the AI uses to answer questions.

Convenience fee - The fee added to online payments to cover processing costs. Configurable as pass-through (resident pays) or absorb (HOA pays).

Statuses

Property statuses

Occupied - A resident account has claimed the property.

Unclaimed - No resident account has claimed the property in HomeHerald; it may or may not be physically vacant.

Delinquent - A label on the property’s record marking it as behind. It is set on the record, not calculated from the balance.

User statuses

Active - Normal - can log in.

Pending - Awaiting admin approval after self-signup.

Rejected - Signup was rejected; account exists but no community access.

Moved Out - User has left the community; to come back, they rejoin with the join code.

Banned - Access revoked due to abuse.

Violation / request statuses

New - Just filed.

Acknowledged - Admin has seen it.

Under Investigation - Actively being worked on.

Closed - Resolved or dismissed.

Booking statuses

Pending - Awaiting approval.

Approved - Confirmed and on the calendar.

Rejected - Denied by admin.

Completed - The booking time has passed.

Cancelled - Cancelled before completion.

Pending Charge / Charged / Charge Failed - For deferred-charge bookings, the payment lifecycle around T-24h.

Roles, briefly

For a full breakdown, see User roles explained.

Role	One-liner
Resident	Sees their own property and can interact with the community
Board Member	All resident access plus admin dashboard for the whole community
Admin	All board access plus the admin-only controls (management team and roles)

Common acronyms

• ARC - Architectural Review Committee
• CC&Rs - Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions (your HOA’s primary rule document)
• HOA - Homeowners Association
• NSF - Non-Sufficient Funds (a bounced check)
• POA - Property Owners Association (sometimes used instead of HOA)

Where to go next

If you’re new to HomeHerald, start with How HomeHerald is organized - the mental-model article that ties all of this together.

If you’re stuck on a specific topic, search by glossary term in the relevant article. Each definition links to the deeper coverage where applicable.