Residents & Board
User roles explained
The three roles in HomeHerald — Resident, Board Member, and Admin. What each can do, what each sees, and how to pick the right one for each person on your team.
Last updated April 29, 2026
Every user in HomeHerald has exactly one role. The role determines what they can see, what they can change, and what notifications they get. There are only three. Pick well — the wrong role at signup can be confusing for the user and a security issue for the community.
The three roles
| Role | Who | What they see |
|---|---|---|
| Resident | Owners, tenants, household members | Their property. Their balance. Community announcements. Their own bookings and requests. |
| Board Member | Sitting board members | Everything residents see, plus the admin dashboard for the whole community |
| Admin | Treasurer, President, or whoever runs the HOA’s HomeHerald account | Everything Board Members see, plus billing, plan, payments setup, and integrations |
Resident
The default role. About 95% of your users.
A resident can:
- See their property — address, balance, recent transactions
- Pay dues, fines, fees online
- Submit requests (complaints, ARC, maintenance)
- Book amenities (pool, gym, pavilion, etc.)
- Send messages to the board
- Read community announcements
- Download HOA documents (covenants, rules, meeting minutes)
- Update their own profile and notification preferences
A resident cannot:
- See other residents’ balances or transactions
- See pending or unresolved violations they didn’t file
- Approve other residents
- Edit properties (other than household-level changes their primary makes)
- Send announcements to the community
- Configure community settings
Board Member
A resident with extra access. Use this for everyone on your sitting board.
A board member can do everything a resident can do, plus:
- See the admin dashboard for the whole community
- View all properties and their balances
- View all transactions across the community
- Approve and reject pending residents
- Issue, escalate, and resolve violations
- Send announcements
- Manage requests across the whole community
- Trigger automations (Dues Chaser runs, Herald Shield review, etc.)
- See and reply to the unified email inbox
- Edit any property
A board member cannot:
- Change billing or plan tier
- Connect / disconnect Stripe
- Configure payment methods
- Toggle integrations (Physical Mail, Pet Protect, etc.)
- Promote other users to admin
This is the right role for most board members — full operational access without the ability to nuke the community’s billing setup by accident.
Admin
The “owner” role. Use this for the Treasurer, the President, and ideally one other person as a backup.
Admins can do everything Board Members can do, plus:
- Connect, disconnect, and configure Stripe for online payments
- Toggle other payment methods (PayPal, checks, Venmo, ACH)
- Change the community’s plan tier (Free → Automate → Enterprise)
- Manage billing and HomeHerald subscription
- Toggle integrations — Physical Mail, Pet Protect, Herald Shield AI agents, Herald Chat
- Configure the AI knowledge base (which sources to crawl, what to index)
- Configure email automation rules
- Promote and demote users between roles
- Delete properties (rare; usually you archive instead)
A safe rule: always have at least two admins. If your only admin gets locked out of email or steps off the board, you’ll be calling support to recover. Two is the minimum.
Picking the right role
A practical guide:
| Person | Recommended role |
|---|---|
| Random resident who just signed up | Resident |
| Co-resident (spouse, family) | Resident |
| Tenant of an absentee owner | Resident |
| Newly-elected board member | Board Member |
| Treasurer | Admin |
| President | Admin |
| Secretary | Board Member |
| Member-at-Large | Board Member |
| Property manager (if your HOA hires one) | Admin (with the ability to revoke quickly) |
| HOA’s lawyer or accountant | Don’t give them HomeHerald access. Email them statements as needed. |
Changing someone’s role
- Members in the admin sidebar
- Click the user
- Click Edit
- Change role
- Save
The change applies on their next page load — they don’t have to log out and back in.
A note on demoting: when a board member’s term ends, demote them back to Resident. Don’t delete their account. They keep their property, their balance, and their history; they just lose admin access. Same goes for an admin stepping down.
Permission edge cases
A few things worth knowing about how roles interact:
Co-residents inherit visibility, not access
If a property has a primary resident who is a Board Member, and a co-resident who is a Resident, the co-resident is just a resident — they don’t get admin access through the household connection.
Role doesn’t override property linkage
A Board Member can see all properties’ balances, but if they live at Lot 14, they’re still the resident of Lot 14 in their own portal view. They have two contexts: “me as a board member looking at the community” and “me as a resident of my unit.”
Banned users keep their role
If you ban a user (see Removing or banning a user), their role is preserved. They just can’t log in. If you un-ban them later, their role is restored as it was.
Audit trail
Role changes are logged. To see who changed someone’s role and when:
- Open the user’s profile
- Click History (or Audit log)
- Each role change shows the previous role, the new role, who made the change, and when
This is useful for:
- Confirming a board member was demoted on the right date
- Investigating a suspicious privilege escalation
- Documenting board transitions for governance
Where to go next
- Approving pending residents — the resident sign-up review queue
- Assigning board titles — labeling board members for display
- Removing or banning a user — the right way to revoke access
- Inviting your board — the bulk-onboard flow for board members