Setting up dues

Connect Stripe first

Your association connects its own Stripe account, and dues are paid out directly into the association's bank account. HOA Grove never holds your community's money, and nothing is deducted from your dues — the fees are added to what the payer owes instead, which is covered under what collecting online costs below.

Stripe will ask for details about the association and the person setting it up, and it verifies that information before releasing funds. That verification is on Stripe's clock, not ours, so start it a week or two before you need to collect.

Set your assessment

Under Payment Settings you set four things:

• Amount — what each property owes per period.
• Frequency — monthly, quarterly or annually.
• Invoice generation day — the day of the period invoices are created and emailed.
• Due day — the day payment is due. Invoices show as past due after it.

A common setup is quarterly, generated on the 1st and due on the 15th, which gives homeowners two weeks.

What collecting online costs

Nothing is deducted from your dues. If the assessment is $285, the association receives $285. Fees are added on top and paid by whoever makes the payment:

• Stripe's processing rate — lower for a bank transfer (ACH) than for a card, and the ACH portion is capped, so a large payment is not charged a large percentage.
• 49¢ to HOA Grove per payment.
• 49¢ to HOA Grove, flat, on every payment. Our part never scales with the amount, so a $600 annual assessment carries the same 49¢ as a $95 monthly one.
• Autopay adds a further 0.5%, which is Stripe's charge for recurring billing rather than ours. HOA Grove's 49¢ is the same on an autopay payment as on a one-off one.

The resident sees the full total before they confirm, itemised, so there is no surprise on their end either. A homeowner who pays by check and is marked paid by an admin carries no fee at all.

Worth telling residents: paying by bank transfer rather than card costs them noticeably less. Some boards put a line to that effect in the invoice announcement.

If you collect dues another way

Online collection is optional. Turn dues collection off and add a link to whatever you use today — your bank's bill pay, a lockbox, a management company portal — and residents will be pointed there instead. Every other part of HOA Grove works the same.