Councils & HOA Rosters

Before you can run an owners' meeting or send a community-wide email in REDA, the system needs to know who belongs to the community — which owners sit on the association, who is on its board, and which tenants take part. This article shows you how to build the three rosters REDA draws on: the owners, the executive body (the board), and the tenants. You'll learn the active-date windows that expire a membership automatically, and the three per-member flags that decide who gets invited, who votes, and who receives general notifications. No prior REDA experience is assumed — every term is defined as we reach it.

The three rosters

A community in REDA is an owners' association — often called a strata, an HOA, or a council — represented by an Account record. Everything you set up in this article hangs off that one account. Three separate groups of people can take part in its meetings and mailings, and each comes from its own place:

The owners and the board are lists you build by hand on the account. Tenants are different — they need no roster record at all, which is the part most people miss, so it gets its own section below.

The account is the anchor

Every roster record points back to one owners' association account, and so does every meeting and every mailing. That account is the single anchor for the whole community. Before you start adding members, confirm the community's buildings actually link to it: a unit's building (its parent property) carries the link to the owners' association account, and that link is what lets REDA count a building's tenants as community members later. If the building isn't linked, tenant participation won't resolve — so this is the first thing to check (see Understanding Properties for the property-to-association link).

Adding owners (Council Members)

Each owner in the community is a Council Member record on the association account (numbered CM-00000). From the account's Council Members related list, click New and fill in:

The three participation flags

Both the owner roster and the board roster carry the same three checkboxes. They are the switches that decide what a member is pulled into:

Adding the board (Executive Body Members)

The elected board is a second roster: Council Executive Body Member records (numbered CEBM-0000000), also on the association account. They follow the same pattern as owners — a required Member Contact and Active Date, a calculated Is Active from the date window, and the same three participation flags. The one difference is the role list. Member Role for the board is one of:

Manager · Section Executive · General Secretary · Chairperson · Member

Tenants — no roster record needed

Tenants take part without ever appearing on a roster. Instead, a tenant is pulled in through a Council Role set on their lease — specifically on the lease's contact roles (the people attached to a lease). REDA resolves the chain in the background, and it's worth understanding in plain words:

the tenant's lease → the unit being leased → that unit's building (the parent property) → the building's owners' association account.

So when a lease contact role carries a Council Role, and the lease is active, that tenant counts as a member of the community that owns the building — no roster row required. REDA only ever pulls in tenants on active leases.

The Council Role field on a contact role is one of two values, chosen to reflect the tenancy:

Alongside the Council Role, a contact role also has its own Council Voting Rights checkbox — tick it if that tenant votes in community matters. Just as with owners and board members, this value travels onto the tenant when a meeting builds its participant list, so votes track to the right people. Setting the Council Role and its voting flag is usually done by leasing staff on the lease (see Contact Roles).

Why the rosters matter downstream

These rosters are the raw material for everything else in the community section. When you run a meeting, REDA builds its participant list by picking only active members whose role you selected on the event, plus tenants when you tick the tenants box — inactive members and unselected roles are skipped. Each chosen member's voting rights and role are copied onto the meeting's participant record. The table below shows which roster feeds which activity:

Setting up a community from scratch

For a first-time setup, order matters. Work through this checklist:

Keeping rosters current

Rosters change with the community. Handle the common changes by date, never by rewriting a person's identity on an old record:

• Ownership change. When an owner sells, set the seller's Inactive Date to the sale date — Is Active flips off automatically and they stop appearing in generated lists. Create the buyer's record with the transfer date. History is preserved.
• Board election. End-date outgoing members and add incoming ones with the election date. Roles live per record, so a member who is re-elected into a different seat gets a new record for the new role.
• Audit tip. Both rosters are plain lists under the account. A list view filtered to Is Active = true is your "current community" view.

Worked example: Harbour Tower Owners Association

The building Harbour Tower has an owners' association account, Harbour Tower Owners Association. The manager sets it up as follows:

• Twelve Council Member records — Role Owner, Active Date set to the association's formation date, each with Council Meeting Invitation and Council Voting Rights ticked.
• Three Executive Body Members — a Chairperson, a General Secretary, and a Manager.
• One owner sells their unit in March, so the manager sets that member's Inactive Date to the sale date. Is Active flips off, and they no longer appear in generated participant lists.
• Two leases in the building carry a council role on a contact role, so those tenants are included whenever an event ticks the tenants box.

A Council Member record: the Role (Owner), the active window (Active Date, Inactive Date), and Council Voting Rights and Is Active ticked in the highlights and Details.

A Council Executive Body Member record with the Member Role set to Chairperson, linked to the same association account and member contact.

Reference: roster fields

The Council Member (owner) record:

The Council Executive Body Member (board) record follows the same shape, with Member Contact and Active Date required, a calculated Is Active, the same three checkboxes, and a Member Role of Manager / Section Executive / General Secretary / Chairperson / Member.

Where to go next

1. Council Meetings & Notifications — run a meeting off these rosters and generate its participants.
2. Mass Email to the Community — reach the community; the General Notification flag feeds it.
3. Contact Roles — where a tenant's council role on the lease lives.
4. Understanding Properties — the building-to-association link the tenant chain depends on.

Frequently asked questions