ForgeHOA Help

ForgeHOA replaces spreadsheets, email threads, and paper forms with one system that your board and residents share. It covers financial tracking (invoices, budgets, reserve forecasting, financial statements), governance (online voting, meetings, architectural review), communications (announcements, messages, a community calendar), and day-to-day operations (maintenance requests, violations, amenity bookings, vendor tracking).

It is built for three kinds of users:

1. Self-managed HOA boards running everything themselves as volunteers.
2. Property management companies running multiple associations.
3. Residents and owners who need to see their own invoices, submit requests, vote, and read community documents.

What you see depends on your role. Residents get read and request access (announcements, maintenance requests, amenity bookings, voting, documents, messaging the board). Board members get governance and enforcement tools on top of that (violations, meetings, reports). Community admins and property managers get full administrative control, including billing, vendors, and the chart of accounts.

An AI assistant called Forge is built into the app to help draft letters, answer governance questions, and summarize activity, but it is a workflow helper, not a lawyer or accountant, and its drafts should be reviewed before you send or sign anything.

When you first sign in without a community, ForgeHOA asks you to choose one of two paths.

1. Create a Community: pick this if you are setting up your association for the first time. You'll become the administrator.
2. Join a Community: pick this if your board or property manager already runs ForgeHOA and gave you an invite code or link.

If you are creating a community, a short wizard walks you through it: pick a starting profile, add your community's name, address, and unit count, add your units, and optionally set up your recurring dues amount. This usually takes under five minutes. After that, a longer first-run setup wizard helps you turn feature modules on or off, upload your governing documents (CC&Rs, bylaws), and invite the rest of your board. You can close the tab at any point; your progress is saved and a banner on your dashboard picks up where you left off.

If you are joining, you need one of three things: an invite link (opens the join screen directly), an invite code (enter it under "Join a Community"), or, if you have neither, you can use "Request an Invite from Your Community." That looks your association up by its community ID, which is your association's name in lowercase with spaces and punctuation turned into hyphens (for example, "St. John's Landing HOA" becomes st-john-s-landing-hoa). If a name match already exists, the ID ends in -1, -2, and so on. Submitting a request sends it to your board, who can approve it and send you a code.

If you just want to look around before setting anything up, ForgeHOA's website offers a sandbox demo you can enter without creating an account.

ForgeHOA's roles work at three levels: platform-wide, per-community, and, for management firms, per-company.

Residents can read announcements, submit maintenance requests, reserve amenities, vote in ballots, view documents, message the board, and submit architectural review (ARC) requests.

ARC Reviewers have everything a resident has, plus the ability to review and decide on architectural review submissions.

Board Members have everything above, plus the ability to create announcements, log violations, approve ARC submissions, manage meetings, and generate reports.

Community Admin and Property Manager are the same permission level; which title you see depends on whether your association is run by a volunteer board (Community Admin) or a paid management company (Property Manager). Both can manage units, members, billing, letters, assessments, vendors, and accounting.

Your sidebar automatically hides anything your role can't use, so if a page you expect isn't there, it's likely restricted rather than missing. If you believe your role is wrong, ask a community admin to change it from the Residents page, or contact ForgeHOA support if you are the only admin and are locked out.

1. Go to the Maintenance page.
2. Click New Request.
3. Choose a category, such as plumbing, electrical, HVAC, or landscaping.
4. Set a priority: low, medium, high, or urgent.
5. Describe the issue. More detail helps it get routed correctly.
6. Attach up to 5 photos if helpful.

You'll get a notification each time the status changes: when it's assigned, when work begins, and when it's resolved. Board members and property managers can assign your request to a vendor, add internal notes, and close it out once the work is done.

1. Go to the Amenities page.
2. Pick the amenity you want, such as the pool, clubhouse, gym, or BBQ area.
3. Choose a date and time range.
4. Enter your guest count, which is limited by the amenity's capacity.
5. Submit. Some amenities require board approval before your reservation is confirmed; others confirm right away.

You cannot double-book an amenity. The system checks for time conflicts, including any buffer time the board has set before and after each booking, and will tell you if your requested slot isn't available.

Most communities require board or committee approval before you make an exterior change to your home, such as painting, adding a fence, or landscaping work.

1. Go to the ARC page.
2. Click New Submission.
3. Choose the project type: paint, roofing, fence, addition, landscaping, or similar.
4. Describe the proposed work.
5. Enter an estimated cost and timeline.
6. Attach photos, drawings, or a contractor's proposal.

You'll be notified when the reviewing committee or board reaches a decision: approved, denied, or a request for revisions. Do not begin work before you receive approval.

When your board opens a ballot, election, or survey for a vote, it appears on the Voting page for as long as it stays active. Open it, review the options, and select one (some ballots also let you abstain). Submit your choice.

You can vote once per ballot. If the ballot is anonymous, your identity is not tied to your vote; if it isn't, the board can see who voted which way. Once a ballot closes, results are shown as a chart, and the board tracks whether the vote reached quorum.

Go to the Documents page to find your community's CC&Rs, bylaws, meeting minutes, insurance certificates, and other files. Documents are organized by category (governing, financial, meeting, insurance, maintenance, general) and you can search by file name, description, or category.

Some documents are marked public and visible to all residents; others are marked private and restricted to the board. If a document you expect isn't visible, it's likely marked private, so ask your board or property manager for a copy. You can download any document you can see directly from the list.

Your unit's ownership is a dated record your association holds, so there is no button in your own account that hands the home to the buyer.

Give your board or manager the closing date. They close your ownership record with an end date and add the buyer with a start date from that day. Your record is kept on the unit rather than deleted, which is what the association's history and any resale disclosure are built from.

Ask them to confirm once it's recorded. Until they do, the unit still shows you as the current owner, and any assessments continue to land on your account.

1. On the sign-in page, click Forgot password.
2. Enter the email address on your account.
3. Check your email for a reset link.
4. Click the link. It takes you to a dedicated password-reset page where you set a new password. You'll be signed in once it's saved.

If you don't receive the email, check your spam folder and confirm you're using the same email address your community has on file. If that still doesn't work, use the Support form, it works while you're signed out.

If this is a forgotten password, use Forgot password on the sign-in page, which is the faster, self-serve route.

If you've lost the device holding your two-factor authentication codes, nobody can turn two-factor off from the sign-in screen, and that is deliberate: it protects your account from being taken over by someone who merely guesses or steals your password. Instead, submit the Support form (it works even while you're signed out) and explain what happens when you try to sign in. ForgeHOA support will confirm your identity and reset your two-factor enrollment. Admins in your own community cannot do this for you.

Support replies based on the priority you pick when you submit a ticket: urgent issues (like being completely locked out) within 2 hours, high-priority within 4 hours, and everything else within one business day. Pick the priority that matches your situation.

Joining ForgeHOA takes one of three things: an invite link from your board (opens the join screen directly), an invite code (enter it under "Join a Community"), or, with neither, the "Request an Invite from Your Community" option on the welcome screen.

That option finds your association by its community ID, which is your association's name in lowercase with every space and punctuation mark turned into a hyphen. For example, "St. John's Landing HOA" becomes st-john-s-landing-hoa. If another community already used that name, the ID ends in -1, -2, and so on, so try the plain version first.

If the lookup finds nothing, the name in the system is probably different from the name you know it by. Submit the association's name, city, and state through the Support form and support can look up the exact ID for you.

New communities start on a 30-day free trial. No card is required to start, and residents keep their normal access throughout the trial.

When the trial ends: if your community has 30 units or fewer, it moves to the free Essentials-equivalent tier automatically and keeps working. If your community has more than 30 units, the community becomes read-only: existing data stays fully intact and viewable, but new entries are blocked until you choose a paid plan. You'll get an email when the trial ends with a link to upgrade.

You can pick a plan any time from Settings, under the Billing tab (community admins and property managers only). If you're using the ForgeHOA mobile app, plan changes and cancellations happen on the forgehoa.com website rather than in the app itself; tapping a plan in the app opens the web page for you.

ForgeHOA has three plans, priced by unit count rather than by feature set:

Essentials ($39/month, up to 30 units, or free during your first 30-day trial and for very small communities after it) includes payment tracking and owner ledgers, online voting, ARC review, committees and amenity booking, letters and inspections, maintenance and violation tracking, manual accounting (journal entries, balance sheet, income statement, reserves), power reports, bulk owner import, e-signatures, an always-on AI dashboard summary, and 25 AI assistant questions per month.

Essentials Plus ($89/month, up to 150 units) includes everything in Essentials with a higher unit cap.

Enterprise (custom pricing, unlimited units) adds the Advanced Toolkit, a dedicated onboarding specialist, priority support, custom branding, single sign-on, and NACHA ACH file export for vendor payments. Talk to sales to set this up.

On either Essentials tier, you can add the Advanced Toolkit for an extra $49/month. It unlocks an unlimited AI assistant (no monthly question cap), AI document analysis, QuickBooks export, maintenance automation workflows, and the AI Insights Suite (sentiment tracking, CC&R drift detection, a fair-housing scanner, and more).

Annual billing is available on any plan for two months free compared to paying monthly.

Only community admins and property managers can change your community's plan. From Settings, open the Billing tab.

To upgrade or downgrade, pick a different plan card and confirm. To manage your payment method, view invoices, or cancel, click Manage billing, which opens the Stripe billing portal in a new tab. Cancellations there take effect at the end of your current billing period by default, and your community's data is not deleted when you cancel.

If a payment fails, you'll see a past-due banner in Settings prompting you to update your payment method before access is restricted.

A promo code field is available at checkout if your community was given one.

1. Go to Settings and choose to delete your account, or go directly to the account-deletion page.
2. Re-enter your password to confirm it's you.
3. Type DELETE MY ACCOUNT exactly as shown.
4. Submit.

You'll be signed out of every device immediately. Your profile (name, email, phone), messages, notification history, and personal records like pet, vehicle, and emergency-contact entries are queued for permanent removal. You have 30 days to cancel the deletion by contacting support; after 30 days it becomes irreversible.

Some records are kept even after deletion: ledger entries such as dues, fines, and payments are anonymized to "Former Resident, Unit #" rather than deleted, to preserve the association's accounting records and meet state retention rules (typically 7 years). Board-action records you participated in, such as votes and meeting attendance, are kept for audit-trail integrity and anonymized after 30 days. Records your association is legally required to retain, such as lien filings, are also kept.

If you belong to more than one community, deleting your account removes you from all of them. There's no way to leave just one community this way; ask that community's admin to remove your membership instead if you want to stay in your other communities.

ForgeHOA encrypts data in transit and at rest, and every major list in the app (invoices, transactions, residents, ballot results, and more) has a CSV export button so your community's records are not locked into the platform.

Conversations with the built-in AI assistant, Forge, stay private to your own community. They are never used to train any AI model and are never shared with another association on the platform.

If you want your personal data removed, see the account-deletion article: it walks through what's deleted immediately, what's anonymized rather than deleted (to preserve financial and audit records your association may be legally required to keep), and the 30-day window to change your mind.

Board admins generate invite links or codes from Settings, under the Team tab, picking a role (board member, community admin, or property manager) for whoever redeems it. A link can be copied and shared directly, or emailed from the same screen.

ForgeHOA does not store who a link was intended for, links are anonymous by design. An invite link is Active until someone uses it (it then becomes Used and cannot be reused), until 14 days pass without anyone redeeming it (it becomes Expired), or until an admin manually revokes it, which disables it immediately.

If you're not sure who you sent a code to, or you suspect it reached the wrong person, revoke it from Settings and generate a fresh one rather than trying to track down who has it.