The HOA-OS Blog
Practical advice, product updates, and community management insights for HOA boards.
HOA Budget Template: The Line Items Every Board Needs
A copy-ready HOA budget structure: income, operating categories, the lines boards forget, and the reserve contribution, with a worked example.
How to Raise HOA Dues Without Starting a Revolt
A dues increase is a budget outcome, a documents question, and a communication job. Boards that treat it as all three get far less pushback.
Capital Improvement vs Maintenance: Which Fund Pays?
Whether the work is a repair, a replacement, or an improvement decides which HOA fund pays, how it is recorded, and sometimes whether owners vote on it.
HOA Reserve Fund: How Much Is Enough for Your Board?
Percent funded explained without the jargon, what the common benchmarks mean in practice, and how to tell whether your reserve contribution is honest.
How to Create an HOA Budget (And What Boards Get Wrong)
A step-by-step walk through the HOA annual budget: the operating side, the reserve side, the line items boards forget, and how adoption really works.
Running an HOA Board That Actually Works
A board that works divides the roles, follows a real process, and keeps the workload sane. The full playbook for an HOA board of directors, pulled together.
Nobody Wants to Run for the HOA Board. Now What?
Empty board seats are a workload problem, not an apathy problem. How to fill vacancies, handle appointments, and make the job askable again.
Violation notice templates that keep your HOA consistent
A walkthrough of violation templates in HOA-OS, from writing the wording once per rule to recording a violation, attaching the photograph, and sending a final notice that already carries the prior dates and charges.
The HOA Secretary: Records, Minutes, and Legal Cover
The HOA secretary keeps the minutes, guards the official records, and handles records requests. Quiet work, until a decision gets challenged and the record is all that stands.
How a board keeps its books and generates statements
A walkthrough of one community's books in HOA-OS, from recording a storm-damage invoice to generating income and expense, budget against actuals, the reserve fund, and the year-end package an accountant asks for.
HOA President Duties: More Referee Than Ruler
The HOA president runs meetings and signs approved contracts, but cannot make policy or spend alone. A plain-English look at the job and its real limits.
How a board collects dues online and tracks who hasn't paid
A walkthrough of dues collection in HOA-OS, from setting one recurring schedule that bills every unit, through residents paying by card or bank account, to the delinquency view that shows who is behind and by how much.
How to import your resident roster from a spreadsheet
A walkthrough of the roster import in HOA-OS, from uploading the file exactly as somebody else wrote it, through the column mapping it shows you before anything is created, to approving the batch that sends the invitations.
Are HOA Board Members Paid? (And Should They Be?)
Almost all HOA board members serve as volunteers. Here is why paying them gets legally and tax-wise messy, and what boards do instead to make the job sustainable.
HOA Treasurer Duties: A Plain-English Job Description
What the HOA treasurer actually does month to month: the close, the budget, the reserves, and the reporting that keeps a board out of trouble.
How to move your HOA records out of a management company
A full walkthrough of the records handover, from the four files to ask the management company for to importing balances, matching them against the old system, and uploading the governing documents.
HOA Board Members: Who Does What (and Why It Matters)
A plain-English guide to the HOA board: the officer roles, what fiduciary duty actually requires, and how decisions get made in a self-managed community.
Fair HOA Rule Enforcement: The Board's Playbook
A week of HOA rules coverage, pulled into one working playbook: know the document, check the statute, notify consistently, log everything, and enforce the same way for everyone.
Selective Enforcement: How Boards Lose HOA Disputes
Enforcing a rule against one owner while ignoring it next door is the fastest way to make that rule unenforceable. Here is how waiver works and how boards avoid it.
California HOA Laws: What Every Board Should Know
The Davis-Stirling Act governs every common interest development in California. Here are the parts a board actually runs into: meetings, elections, records, and enforcement.