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Every user-visible change to The Good HOA, newest first, in plain English.
· New
Boards can start a private conversation with one resident from the Messages page or straight from their record, about a violation, a balance, or anything else. The resident is emailed and replies in their portal, and the whole conversation stays on their record for the next board. Included free.
· New
Residents can now appeal a violation from their portal. The board schedules a hearing (the resident is emailed the date and place), then records whether the violation stands, the fine is reduced, or it's overturned. While an appeal is open, letters and fines on that violation are paused, and every step is kept in a record that can't be edited.
· New
Residents can attach up to 8 photos when they report a maintenance issue, or add more later. The board sees them as thumbnails and can open any one full size to send to whoever is doing the repair.
· New
Residents can book the pool, clubhouse or courts from the portal: pick a day, a start time and how long, and two neighbours can never book the same slot. Boards set the hours, booking length, how far ahead people can book and a limit per household, plus an optional fee or refundable deposit paid online. An optional $10/month add-on, billed separately.
· New
The money pages are now a single Finance area with Overview, Money in, Money out, Banking, Books, Budgets and Reports. You can log expenses that have no vendor bill, with receipts, or import last year's spreadsheet, and Budgets now compare what you planned with what you actually spent. Old bookmarks still work.
· New
Under Finance → Banking, import the statement your bank gives you (OFX, QFX or CSV) and each deposit and withdrawal is lined up with the payments, deposits and expenses you recorded. Confirm the suggested matches, record a check that was never entered, set aside bank fees, and print a reconciliation report. Free.
· New
Reports now has a Form 1120-H worksheet. Pick the tax year and it splits what you collected into exempt dues, capital contributions and taxable income, runs the 60% and 90% tests, and exports a CSV or Excel file with form line numbers for your CPA. It prepares the numbers; your CPA still reviews and files.
· New
Under Finance → Budgets → Reserve planner, list what the association will one day replace (roof, paving, pool, fencing) with when it went in, how long it lasts and what it costs today. You'll see how well funded your reserves are, a 30-year schedule of big replacements, and a recommended yearly contribution you can put straight into your budget.
· New
The Billing page now shows how many letters your HOA mailed this month and last, what they cost, and a six-month trend. HOAs that mail a lot can buy letter credits: 25 standard letters for $99 or 50 for $179, about 20% off. Each standard letter uses a credit before anything is billed; certified letters still bill per letter.
· Improved
Each invoice in the ledger is now labelled Dues, Late fee, Fine, Amenity or Installment, and you can filter by type. Each payment shows what it paid for. Invoices you create yourself can be given a category (Dues, Special assessment, Fee/charge, Reimbursement or Other); it's a label only and doesn't change late fees or payment plans.
· Improved
Boards can delete a violation logged by mistake and restore it from Settings → Activity. After you finish Stripe setup, Get paid online now says "Stripe is verifying" instead of asking for more information. Choosing who pays the processing fee is simpler. If you invite someone who already uses The Good HOA with another association, you'll see a clear message instead of a silent failure. Form fields across Finance, Bids and Meetings now look consistent.
· New
Under Finance → Bids, describe the work, set a deadline and invite vendors from your directory; each gets a private link to submit a price, with no account needed. Bids stay sealed, even from the board, until you open them together after the deadline, then you compare them side by side and record which one you chose and why. Reports → Bid comparison puts it all in one export for the board packet. Board members only; included free.
· New
Boards now have a Vendors page under Finance: one place for everyone the association pays, with their contacts, W-9, certificates of insurance, licenses and contracts. Each vendor shows whether their insurance is current, and the board is emailed 30 days and again 7 days before a certificate runs out. You can also assign a vendor to a maintenance request, with a warning if their insurance has expired. Board members only; included free.
· Improved
Our Privacy Policy (version 2.2) now covers the vendors and contractors an association keeps records about, including how an uploaded W-9 is handled: only board administrators can open it, through a link that expires within minutes, and every open is recorded in the audit trail. Vendor records are kept as permanent association financial records rather than purged after the retention window.
· New
Boards now have a Bills page under Finance for the invoices the association owes its vendors. Drop in the vendor's PDF and it opens beside the form, so you can type the bill straight off it, split it into line items and code it to a budget category and the operating or reserve fund. Send it to the board for approval: in Settings → Bill approval, list who approves and how many must agree, with one click for "Reserve bills need 2 approvals", the practice California and Nevada boards follow. Approvers get an email and can approve or reject from their phone without signing in, and nobody can approve a bill they entered or sent. Once approved, record how it was paid in the payment register: check number, date and bank account, with one check able to cover several bills or part of one. You are warned before an invoice or check number is used twice, and a lost check is voided with a reason and reissued, never deleted. Every step stays on the bill with who did it and when. Paying a vendor straight from The Good HOA by bank transfer is not available yet: for now, pay from your association's bank as usual and record the payment here. Board members only; included free.
· New
Set up a bill that arrives on a schedule — the landscaping contract every month, pool service every quarter, insurance once a year — and the Bills page creates the draft for you on each due date, or simply expects it. Drafts still need the vendor's invoice and the board's approval; nothing is approved or paid on its own. If an expected bill hasn't arrived a few days after its due date, the board gets one email and the bill shows on a new Expected tab, where "Enter bill" opens the form already filled in. Bills typed by hand are matched to the period they fill, a bill well above or below the usual amount gets a warning, and any bill can be duplicated in one click. Board members only; included free.
· New
Five new reports on the Reports page turn your bills and payment register into board-packet answers: who you paid and how much, spending against each budget category, approved bills still owed grouped by how late they are, and every vendor payment for the auditor. A new 1099 preparation report lists each vendor paid at least $2,000 in the tax year (the 2026 federal threshold; change it in Settings if your CPA says so), with their tax classification, whether a W-9 is on file, and their mailing address. Card payments and voided payments are left out, tax ID numbers are never shown, and every view or export is recorded in the Activity log. It prepares a list for your CPA; it does not file anything. Everything exports to CSV or Excel. Board members only; included free.
· New
Boards can now show residents what their dues pay for. Turn on "Where the money went" in Settings → Bill approval and every resident gets a page in their sidebar with what the association paid its vendors in the year: totals by budget category with each one's share, by month, and by vendor. It is built from the payment register, so there is nothing extra to keep up, and you choose the date it starts from. Residents see totals only, never bills, invoices, check numbers or vendor contact details. It is off until you turn it on, and switching it on or off is recorded in the Activity log. Your property manager can see it too. Our Privacy Policy (version 2.2) now says so. Included free.
· New
If your association is dissolving or moving on, a board admin can now close its account from Settings. Residents lose access right away and billing stops. Everything is permanently deleted after 30 days, and any board admin can restore the account until then.
· Improved
The sign-in page now asks whether you live in the community or serve on the board, and shows the quickest way in for each. Residents get a one-click email sign-in link, with no password needed. It also works better on phones and with a keyboard, and error messages are in plain English.
· New
Pick from six templates, choose a gradient, pattern, illustrated scene, or photo background, and turn on seasonal themes that change on their own for the seasons and holidays. A live preview shows every change, on desktop or phone, before you save. Find it on the Design tab of the Community Site page.
· New
Residents and board members now have one place to talk to their neighbors without a Facebook group: the Community Feed, under Community Feed in the sidebar. Post updates and photos, reply, and react; board posts carry a Board badge so everyone knows who is speaking for the association. Boards turn it on from Settings → Community feed, and moderate it from the same place as the website wall — if you run both, they show the same posts. Included free.
· New
Boards can now send announcements from the portal instead of a personal email list. Write it once (bold, lists and links work), pick who gets it — everyone, or the lists you keep, like “Building A” or “Pool key holders” — and file it under a topic such as Pool or Landscaping. You see exactly how many residents it will reach before you send, and afterwards who was emailed. Residents get one email per announcement and see everything on their dashboard and a new Announcements page. In Settings they can mute the topics they don’t care about or turn announcement emails off entirely — they still see every announcement in the portal.
· New
Board members can now schedule board and membership meetings in the portal, publish the notice and agenda, and take minutes during the meeting with the same builder as our free tool — saved as you type, with attendance from your board roster and quorum worked out for you. When another board member approves the minutes, a PDF is filed in Documents under Meeting Minutes automatically, and open action items roll onto the next agenda. Residents see the meetings they can attend on their Meetings page and calendar, with the agenda and the approved minutes.
· New
Dues can now bill themselves. When you generate dues, set Repeat to monthly, every 3 months, twice a year or annually — the invoices go out now and again every period after that, with the description filled in for you. You still see exactly how many invoices and what total before anything happens. A panel on Financials shows the next run and lets you pause, edit or stop it any time. Say when it should stop — a fiscal year by default — and you are shown the whole commitment up front: "12 invoices per resident, $3,000 per home, $72,000 total, Jan 31 to Dec 31". Bill on the 31st and February bills on its own last day, never skipped. One-time runs work exactly as before — and they are no longer labelled "annual", which they never really were.
· Improved
Set your violation fine schedule once: pick your state, review the warning → fine → hearing ladder, turn it on. Every violation is placed on its rung ("2nd parking offense in 12 months"), and when a cure date passes the board is asked to approve the next step, with the notice already drafted. Nothing is charged until a board member approves it. Publish the schedule as a public document in one click. Late fees no longer apply to violation fines.
· New
Boards that would rather hand over the spreadsheets can now request a quote. We load your roster, balances, and documents, set up dues and payments, and walk your board through it. The platform stays free; onboarding is optional and quoted per community.
· Improved
Instead of one fee that repeats daily, you can write the schedule your CC&Rs describe: a fee once at 10 days, the greater of $25 or 5%, a monthly percent on the balance, or escalating steps. Set caps per invoice and per owner per year, pick your timezone, and see what any unpaid invoice would cost at 30, 60, and 90 days before you save.
· New
Community websites now have a "Resident sign in" button in the header and footer that takes residents straight to the portal.
· New
Five new tools are live on our public site: work out whether you have quorum, what your reserves should be, and what a special assessment costs each owner — plus builders for board meeting minutes and a new-owner welcome packet you can print or download. Nobody needs an account, so you can send the link to a board member who has never logged in, or to an owner who wants to check your math. Nothing you type into them is sent to us or saved anywhere but your own browser.
· New
HOA Board Fundamentals is a free six-lesson course for board members: fiduciary duty, governing documents, meetings, budgets and reserves, enforcement, and records. Lessons are interactive — quick self-checks, real-world scenarios, and calculators you can use with your own numbers. Anyone can read without an account; board admins can take the exam and earn a Certificate of Completion.
· New
Reports now includes a dated list of every charge from us — printed letters, add-ons, and the payment processing fee where your board absorbs it — with a total and a subtotal per category. Pick any period and export it to CSV or Excel.
· New
Every document now has one setting for who can open it: Board only, Shared with residents, or Public website. Board only means just your board and property manager, so confidential minutes and legal correspondence can finally live here instead of in email. New uploads start as Board only and every change is logged in your Activity feed.
· New
Card and bank payments carry a processing fee, and until now it was always added on top of the resident's invoice. Your board can now choose to have the association absorb it instead, from Get Paid Online. Residents then pay the invoice amount and nothing else — no fee is shown or added anywhere. The page prices both options side by side on a $300 invoice so you can see exactly what each one costs before you choose.
· Fixed
Printed letters were always addressed to the property, with the unit number attached — so an owner of unit #10 who lives at 123 Fieldstone Drive received mail addressed to "123 Fieldstone Drive #10", an address the post office returns or misdelivers. You can now set a separate mailing address on a resident record, for absentee and investor owners, snowbirds, homes owned by a business, or anyone who prefers a PO box. Letters go there instead, without the property's unit number attached, and the address check before each send now validates the address the letter will actually be mailed to.
· Fixed
Letters were printing garbled text wherever a special character appeared — the dash in "Re: Covenant violation notice — Unit 4B" came out as "—", and resident names or street addresses containing accented letters were affected the same way. Letters now print these correctly. The on-screen preview was always right; only the printed page was affected.
· Fixed
When your board cancels a charge, it now disappears from your balance and from every total, report and export straight away — no more being shown money you don't owe. The invoice stays in the community's records as a cancelled entry, so the books still show the charge was raised and then voided.
· New
Resident records used to offer two property types — Single Family and Townhome — which left condominium associations with nowhere to put "Condo". You can now choose Condo, Duplex, Apartment, Hangar, Lot / Land, Storage Unit, Marina Slip, Commercial Unit, or Other. Communities identified by something other than a street address get a matching field — Hangar #, Slip #, Lot # — that shows in your directory and on resident packets, and is searchable. It is never used as a mailing address: letters still go to the owner's address.
· Fixed
The "I'm authorized to act for this HOA" line on the signup form was rendering badly — an oversized checkbox with the text squeezed into a narrow column running off the edge of the form. It now shows as a normal checkbox with the text beside it, so you can actually read what you are agreeing to before creating an account.
· Fixed
Residents could not sign in on their community website, because the wall needs an email and password and most residents had never set one — they had only ever used the sign-in links we email. The wall now offers a one-click "email me a link to set my password" that brings you back to your community site when you are done. And if you sign in with an account that is not on your community roster, the wall now says so, names the account, and offers a sign-out button instead of leaving you staring at an empty page.
· New
Residents now have a "Contact the Board" page for complaints about noise, neighbors, common areas, or the rules, with photos attached if it helps. Boards get one queue instead of texts and doorstep conversations: triage each complaint, close it out with a written explanation that reaches the resident, or turn it into a violation in one click. Complaints go to your board only — never to other residents, including whoever a complaint is about.
· Improved
Our Privacy Policy has been rewritten to describe the platform as it really works. It now names every company that touches your data — including the vendor that prints and mails your letters — spells out exactly what your board can see and export about you, explains that records your association controls stay under its control, and says how long deleted records are kept before they are erased for good. It also confirms we never see card numbers, never sell your information, and run no ad tracking or screen recording inside the app.
· New
Units owned by an LLC, trust, or builder can now carry a company name on the resident record, with an optional contact person. Invoices, statements, reports, and the directory all show the company, and printed letters put it on its own line of the envelope — so notices reach the legal owner instead of a person’s name squeezed into fields that never fit. The CSV importer accepts a company column too.
· Improved
Our Terms have been rewritten to cover what the platform really does: online dues payments, payment plans, late fees, printed mail, community websites and the Community Wall, and how your residents’ information is handled. They now say plainly that money residents pay belongs to your association, that your content stays yours, and that nothing we publish is legal advice. Board admins are asked to accept them once in the app.
· New
A new About page explains what The Good HOA is, why we built it, and who works on it — every team member listed by name, title, and email, alongside our mailing address. If you want to know who is running the software your community depends on, it is one click from any page.
· New
A chat bubble now lives in the corner of thegoodhoa.com. Type your question, leave your email, and it lands directly in front of our team — we reply to your inbox, usually within a few hours.
· Improved
Every page on thegoodhoa.com and every email we send now carries our physical mailing address, so you always know exactly who is behind the platform your community runs on.
· New
The Good HOA now has a public "What's new" page. Every user-facing feature and improvement we ship gets an entry here, so boards and residents can see the platform improving week over week.
· New
Communities with a website can now turn on a Community Wall: a private, Facebook-style feed where residents post updates, photos, and replies. Residents sign in right on your community's website, and admins get a moderation queue and visibility controls. Available as a $5/month add-on.
· New
From the Reports page, admins can download a complete packet for any resident: every violation, invoice, and payment — including photos — bundled into a single ZIP with a summary PDF. Handy for disputes, estoppel requests, and board handoffs.
· New
New admins now get a step-by-step setup wizard covering residents, dues, and community details. It's resumable — leave any time and pick up where you left off from the dashboard checklist — and fully optional if you'd rather explore on your own.
· Improved
A major upgrade to the website builder: live preview before you publish, configurable sections (events, board members, FAQ), scheduled announcements, photo reordering with captions, and a contact-form inbox that emails your admins when someone reaches out.
· New
Residents can attach plans and photos to architectural review requests. Boards review them in a proper decision workflow — approve or deny with notes — and can send the decision to the resident as a mailed letter automatically.
· New
Admins can attach up to five photos when logging a violation, and residents see them in their portal — so "what exactly is the issue?" answers itself.
· Improved
Violation search, resident address search, a faster resident picker, violation deadline extensions, and smoother navigation throughout the admin app.
· New
The core platform is now completely free for associations up to 400 units — dues collection, violations, maintenance, voting, and documents included, with no credit card required. Optional add-ons like the community website and mailed letters are the only paid features.
· Improved
We completed a second full security audit of the platform and shipped a round of hardening fixes across the board. No action needed from boards or residents — just an ongoing commitment to keeping your community's data safe.
· New
Residents can now sign in with an email and password in addition to email sign-in links, and reset a forgotten password themselves — no more waiting on an admin.
· New
Boards can run Official polls whose results are sealed into tamper-evident records once voting closes — with PDF and CSV exports ready for annual meetings, audits, or legal review.
· New
Residents can split a large invoice — a special assessment, a repair bill — into 2 to 12 monthly payments. Smaller plans are approved automatically; larger ones go to the board for a quick yes/no.
· New
Send violation notices and other official letters as real, physical mail straight from the platform — with address verification and delivery tracking, and no printing, stuffing, or stamps.
· New
Residents can put their dues on autopay and never miss a payment. Failed charges retry automatically on a gentle schedule, and autopay pauses itself after repeated failures so nobody racks up surprise fees.
· New
Give your association a public website at yourcommunity.thegoodhoa.com — announcements, documents, amenities, and contact info, all managed from your admin dashboard. Available as a $10/month add-on.