Getting started
From an empty account to a community with a levy, a bank account and members who can log in — the five-step setup, the checklist that follows it, and the fastest honest way to bring two hundred people on board.
Setup is deliberately front-loaded: everything you skip lands on a checklist on your dashboard that stays there until the underlying record exists. Nothing is a "completed" tick you clicked once — the checklist reads the database.
Your account
You sign up with a name, a phone number and a six-digit code sent by SMS; email-and-password and Google/Facebook sign-in work too, and a magic link if you would rather not keep a password. After you sign in, the app sends you to one of two places:
- Your community, if you already belong to one — you land on its dashboard.
- Welcome to tribe.one, if you do not — with three choices: Start a new community, Find your community, I have an invitation code.
Create the community
Five steps, each marked "Step N of 5". Only the first cannot be skipped — it is the one that creates the community. The other four all offer "Skip for now", and the screen you skipped is waiting in Settings when you get to it; nothing is lost by clicking Continue.
| Step | What it asks | Can you skip? |
|---|---|---|
| 1 · Start a community | Name, URL slug (this becomes your address), community type, roughly how many members, a monthly budget, country — and for South Africa, province, municipality and ward. | No — this creates the community |
| 2 · Set up | Logo, description, currency, and whether new members must upload verification documents. | Yes |
| 3 · Where should members pay? | The community's own bank account and the EFT reference prefix. | Yes |
| 4 · Pick a plan | Tick the modules you need; the app names the cheapest plan that covers them, and offers the free plan. | Yes — you start on Free |
| 5 · Invite your community | A QR code, your join link and share buttons. | Yes |
Whoever creates the community is its admin. Creating it also publishes a starter Constitution and Terms & Conditions as version 1 — text to review and edit, not a legal document to keep.
The community name can be changed at any time in Settings → Community. The URL slug cannot — it is the address every invitation, QR code and bookmark points at. Changing one is a support request, not a setting.
The 14 days
A paid plan starts on a 14-day trial that takes no card and charges nothing. All the paid modules are unlocked from the first minute, so the trial is a real trial of the real thing.
- Day 1: the subscription starts as trialing. No invoice exists, no payment method is collected.
- Day 15: the first invoice is raised automatically and the subscription moves to past due — a grace state. Modules keep working, and both the admin's notifications and email carry a "your trial ended" notice.
- Paying establishes the recurring mandate at the same time. Cancelling before day 15 costs nothing.
Choose the free plan instead and none of this applies: it is free indefinitely, with the limits the plan states.
The first-week checklist
Admins see a card on the dashboard headed for their community type — an estate is told to finish setting up its estate, a stokvel to get to its first cycle. It is dismissible, and it comes back for a new admin because it is about the community, not the person.
| Community type | The steps it asks for |
|---|---|
| Estate | Estate details · capture units · set up the levy · add the estate bank account · invite the first owners · pick a plan |
| HOA / body corporate | Scheme details · publish the rules and conduct rules · capture units · set up the levy · schedule the first trustees' meeting · pick a plan |
| Stokvel | Name the stokvel · capture the roster · set the cycle rules · add the pot account · invite the members · pick a plan |
| Neighbourhood | Set up the street group · invite the neighbours · send the first safety notice · pick a plan |
Every step links to the page that completes it, and it ticks when the record exists — a description and a logo for the profile step, a real bank account row, at least one parcel in the register, an active levy schedule or any charge raised, more than one active member. There is no way to make the checklist happy without doing the work, which is the whole point.
A brand-new community also gets a gated Load sample content button that adds three example calendar events, so a committee can see what a filled-in month looks like before they own one.
Inviting people
There are three ways in, and they assume different amounts of trust.
| Method | How it works | Best for |
|---|---|---|
A personal invitation/members/invite | One person at a time: name, email, optional phone, role, a personal note. They get a one-time link valid for seven days and only the invited address can accept it. | Committee members, a treasurer, a gate account |
The join link and QR/join/<slug> | Anyone with the link can request to join; an admin approves the request. The shared page carries a printable QR poster. | Putting a poster in the guardhouse, or a link in the group chat |
A join code/join/code | An eight-character code generated in Settings → Community, with an expiry and an optional use limit. Redeeming it admits the person immediately — no approval, no documents. | An AGM where you want fifty people in before the meeting starts |
There is no bulk CSV invite. The scalable route is the join code: generate one, set expiry and uses, and broadcast it — everyone who redeems it is in immediately. The join link is the safer alternative when you want an admin to see each name first. Turning off "Require verification documents from new members" removes the upload step that otherwise slows a large intake down.
Pending invitations are managed from the members list, where they can be resent or cancelled. The seven-day expiry is deliberate: a link that still works a month later is a link sitting in an old email.
If you are joining
- You have a link — it opens a preview card showing the community, who invited you, the role and the expiry date. Create an account if you need one, then accept. If the invitation was addressed to a different email address, it will say so rather than fail silently.
- You found the community — open its join page, request to join, and wait for an admin. If the community asks for documents, upload each one it lists (image or PDF, up to 10 MB) with the request.
- You have a code — enter it on the join page and you are in, straight away.
The first time you enter, you will be asked to read and accept the community's governing documents. That gate is once. If the committee later republishes the constitution, you get a banner asking you to re-accept rather than a locked screen.
A realistic first week
- Day 1 — the bones. Create the community, add the bank account, invite the two or three people who will actually use it. Do not invite the whole estate yet.
- Day 1 — the levy. Capture parcels, then a levy schedule. A correctly configured schedule raises its first charges the same day rather than waiting for the nightly run.
- Day 2 — the members. Decide how the rest get in: a join code circulated on the group chat, or the join link on a poster. Approve requests from the join-requests queue.
- Day 3 — the rules. Publish the real constitution and terms, with a note saying what changed from the starter. Members are then asked to accept the real document, not the template.
- Day 4 — the first payment. Pay one levy into the community account, claim it as a member, approve the claim as the treasurer, then post the transaction. Doing this once end to end with a small amount is worth more than any amount of reading.
- Day 5 — the first meeting. Convene one, send the notice, record the register, write and approve the minutes. It is the single best proof to a sceptical owner that the system is not another WhatsApp group.