Getting started for admins

This is the order that works. Each step assumes the ones above it.

Steps 1 and 2 need a CivicPort platform admin, because entity type and entitlements are not yours to change. Everything from step 3 down is yours.

1. The community record exists

A platform admin creates the community with its name, location and entity type (HOA, apartment complex, country club, municipality). Entity type is close to permanent: it decides which features can ever be offered. A municipality, for example, is never offered dues, violations, bookings or resale documents.

Creating the community generates a join code, which is how residents who were not individually invited register themselves.

2. Features are switched on

Almost nothing is on by default. Tell your platform admin which of these you need and they enable them per community:

You want	Ask for
Dues, fines, autopay	Payments (requires Stripe, step 6)
Covenant enforcement with fines and hearings	Violations
Architectural review	ARC
Amenity or clubhouse reservations	Bookings
Elections and surveys	Voting (needs a one-time bylaws attestation)
A public website	Public site
A lobby TV display	Signage
Resale and estoppel packets	Resale
Leases and e-signatures	Tenants
Applications and background checks	Member onboarding
Homes advertised for rent	Listings
Fillable forms	Forms

The full list, with what each one unlocks, is in feature toggles.

3. Brand the community

Community Settings > Branding. Upload a logo, set a header image and a brand colour. This is what residents see on the sign-in page, on the Overview page, and in the emails CivicPort sends on your behalf.

Branding also sets the community's slug, the DNS label it answers on, so demohoa serves demohoa.civicport.io. Give residents that address rather than the bare platform one: they land on a page that already looks like their community.

See branding.

4. Configure the intake you cannot avoid

Two things every community needs before residents arrive:

• Issue types (Community Settings > Issue Types). The categories residents pick from when reporting a problem. Get these right early; they are what your dashboard charts break down by.
• Groups (Community Settings > Groups). Who work gets assigned to: landscaping, maintenance, the pool contractor. Each group holds members with a role of supervisor, employee or contractor.

5. Invite your members

People > Manage Members. Two ways:

• Share the join code. Fast, good for a full community at once. Anyone holding the code can register.
• Email invitations. One address at a time, addressed to that person. Use this where who gets in matters, and where you want the person to arrive already attached to a specific address.

Promote the rest of the board to community admin from the same screen.

See managing members.

6. Connect Stripe, if you are collecting money

Finance > Manage Payments walks through Stripe Connect onboarding. Payouts go to your community's own Stripe account, not to CivicPort.

Nothing can be charged until Stripe reports charges enabled, so do this before publishing fees. Then create your dues and assessments. See payments.

If you also take cheques and cash, say so on the collections policy before residents start asking. An empty list means "we accept none"; never having answered means residents are told nothing at all. See offline payments.

7. Publish your governing documents

Operations > Documents. Upload the CC&Rs, bylaws, rules and policies, each tagged with its document type and effective date. Residents read them under Governing Documents, the checklist can require an acknowledgement, and resale packets can attach them without your uploading anything twice.

Tick publicVisible on anything that should also appear on your public website.

8. Tune the resident checklist

Community Settings > Checklist. The stock items cover most communities. You can disable what does not apply, edit wording, add your own items, or apply a preset bundle in one click.

Most items derive their own completion from real records, so you are deciding what the community asks for, not tracking it by hand. See checklist.

9. Turn on the community side

Once members exist, open the things that need an audience:

• Announcements for one-way notices.
• Community Board for resident discussion, with a moderation queue behind it.
• Events, with RSVPs and attendance caps.
• Messages, which routes resident questions to the right person by topic rather than into one shared inbox.
• FAQs, which quietly removes a large share of the messages you would otherwise answer one at a time.

10. Publish a public website

Community Settings > Public Site. Pick a template, choose which sections show, write the about text, list the board, add photos. Nothing appears publicly until you both publish the site and tick each individual item as publicly visible: the public site is opt-in twice on purpose.

You can serve it on your subdomain, buy a domain through CivicPort, or connect one you already own. See the public website.

11. Work the setup card

Your admin dashboard carries a setup checklist covering most of the steps above, and it knows which ones you have actually done. Use it to see what is left rather than tracking this page by hand.

12. Take the tour

The guided tour points at the real sidebar and skips anything your community does not have switched on, which makes it a better map of your console than any screenshot. It offers itself on your first visit to the dashboard, and you can restart it any time.