49 Commits Building a Resident Portal: Payments, Permissions, and Documents

Payment Workflows

The bulk of the day was payments. I made resident payment status situational and schedule-aware (894ec39a), added official receipt numbers and phone-first check recording (3bee2558), fixed the receipt print layout to fit one page (0b0ab1ab), and promoted check deposit to a first-class treasurer workflow (f3989f6b).

I overhauled the pay-link UX around remaining balances and bulk chase (549ebad7), synced flexible Stripe autopay schedules including monthly (c90e608f), hardened the one-time Stripe checkout lifecycle (1b677a95), disambiguated legacy Stripe plan products (4e690ad2), matched Stripe plans to resident balances (13e2029c), handled replacement checkout races (709351f7), and closed resident payment edge cases (952e6587).

Then I added one-click “open next year dues” for assessments (a74f7e2e). The through-line is that payments aren’t a button—they’re a lifecycle with races, retries, and reconciliation.

Capability-Based Authorization

I added capability-based authorization and role-aware admin navigation (cf74878a) and addressed the review feedback (1d96562e). Moving from role checks to capability checks means permissions are described by what someone can do rather than by a role label, which is far more flexible for a board that has officers with overlapping responsibilities.

Documents and Communication

I added primary contact self-service with treasurer contact cleanup (a8483295), Avery 5160 mailing label preview and print (5679bd46), explicit document destinations with transfer-safe access (50f3ffec), resident personal document storage (4e2bd7ba), a unified contact and suggestion inbox with category routing (92eea52b), an architectural application resident and reviewer workspace (8e6a7b5d), and a compliance case notices timeline and workspace (b8f836d3). Each shipped with review fixes.

Demo Data and Polish

I seeded a full demo neighborhood for walkthroughs (deb90472), expanded it later (c6bef676), and wrote copy-paste URLs into the demo video script (17d8f649). A realistic demo dataset is what makes a feature walkthrough believable, and the video script is a reminder that this is a product someone has to sell.

The Table Polish Saga

A small arc: tighten the resident list to three columns (4818a4e9), disable the table gold hover accent on mobile (bb29b577), remove it entirely (f58e6919), then restore it desktop-only (4c457aef). Sometimes the right answer is only found by trying all three.

What a Portal Needs

Trust. Receipts, reconciliation, capability checks, and document access boundaries are the unglamorous features that make a resident portal something people will actually use for money.