Board notes on a resident or property

Boards forget. Somebody talks to a homeowner in the driveway about the fence, the board changes over in March, and eighteen months later nobody can say whether that conversation ever happened. A board note is the fix: a short, dated, signed line about a home or a person that stays on the record for good.

What a note is

A note is a plain sentence or two written by an admin or board member, attached to a property, and optionally to the person who lives there.

Spoke to Mrs. Ruiz on the 21st about the fence height. She is getting a quote and will come back to us by the 5th.

Two things make it more than a sticky note:

• It is dated and signed. Every note carries who wrote it and when, automatically. Nobody has to remember to add that.
• It links to the records it is about. When you write the note you can attach the ticket, the email, the letter or the notice you are talking about. Those links never break.

Notes are board-only

Residents never see notes. There is no resident screen that shows them, no email that includes them, and no way for a resident to request one through the app. Herald will use notes when a board member asks it something in board chat or in the admin assistant, and it will never repeat one to a resident on chat, on the phone, or over text.

That said, write them as if a lawyer will read them one day, because in a dispute one might. Facts and dates, not opinions about the person.

Notes cannot be deleted or edited

This is the part that surprises people, and it is deliberate. “Link it forever” only means something if the link cannot be quietly removed later.

• There is no delete. Not for an admin, not for the board president.
• There is no edit. The text you save is the text that stays.

When a note is wrong, you correct it instead. Open the note, choose Correct this note, and write the corrected version. HomeHerald saves your correction as a new note and marks the original as corrected - the original stays visible, struck through, with the correction underneath it. The record shows both what the board believed and when it learned better, which is exactly what a record is for.

Writing a note

Members sidebar → open a member → Notes & history

or

Properties sidebar → open a property → Notes & history

Either way you land on the same panel. Choose the Notes tab, click Add a board note, type it, and save.

While you are writing, Link a ticket, email, letter or notice opens a search over that resident’s own records. Pick the ones the note refers to. They appear on the note as chips, and clicking a ticket chip opens the ticket.

There is also a Pin to the top checkbox. Use it sparingly - a pinned note sits above everything else on the home, so it is for the thing a new board member needs to know first (“this owner is on a payment plan, do not chase”), not for the last thing you happened to write.

Notes attach to the home first

A note belongs to the property, with an optional link to the person. That ordering is on purpose:

• People move. Homes do not. A note about a drainage problem at 201 Cedar Bend is still true after the house sells, and the next board should see it.
• A note that is genuinely about a person - a payment arrangement, a pattern of complaints - carries the person link too, so it follows them if they claim another address in the community.

If a resident has not claimed their home yet, you can still write notes. They attach to the property and will pick up the person later.

The Correspondence tab

The same panel has a Correspondence tab, and it is worth knowing about even if you never write a note. It merges everything the HOA has on file for that resident and that home into one list, newest first:

• Board notes
• Tickets and violations
• Inbound emails from the inbox, with any replies you sent
• Mailed letters
• Announcements and notices they received
• In-app messages, both directions
• Amenity bookings
• Ledger activity - dues, payments, fines
• Work orders at that address

The chips across the top filter by type. The toggle above them switches between This resident and This property (all residents) - the second one adds co-residents and anyone who lived there before, which is how you answer “has this ever come up at this house?”

Finding a note again

Three ways in:

• From the member or the property, through Notes & history.
• From a ticket. When board notes reference a ticket, the ticket detail shows a Board notes referencing this ticket line that opens straight to them.
• By asking Herald in board chat. “What do we know about 201 Cedar Bend?” pulls the recent notes into the answer along with the tickets and the ledger.

If you work with a management company

Notes are board data. A management company you invite to help run the community does not get them by default - board notes will ride the Resident requests grant when co-managed permissions launch. Herald will not read a note out to that company’s people either.

When to write one

The test is simple: would the next board member be worse off not knowing this?

Good candidates:

• Any conversation that happened outside the app - a phone call, a driveway chat, a meeting in someone’s kitchen.
• The reason behind a decision that looks odd on paper (“we waived the June fine because the mailed notice went to the old address”).
• A pattern that no single ticket shows on its own.
• An agreement with a homeowner that has no other home in the system.

Not worth a note: anything the system already records on its own. Payments, ticket updates and sent letters are already on the Correspondence tab with better detail than you would type.

Related

• Approving pending residents
• What residents see vs admins
• Escalations and repeat offenders