Scope, Price, and Where FRONTSTEPS Leads
FRONTSTEPS goes further on the operations side: configurable workflows, bulk notices, a resident app, and visitor access hardware. It also publishes no price. CommunityPay includes the core requests and publishes its price.
| Dimension | CommunityPay | FRONTSTEPS |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | $1 per unit per month, $100 minimum and $500 cap per community; no setup fee, no contract (pricing page) | Not published; a Starter Pack with a flat monthly fee is described for one to ten communities |
| Violations, work orders, architectural requests | Violation reports and maintenance requests are submitted, handled, and tracked by status in the database; violation fines can be linked to an accounting invoice. ARC requests run as signed documents. The core requests, not a configurable workflow suite. | Caliber lists violation management, work order processing, and architectural request workflows (described as flexible), plus custom violation letters, bulk notice sending, and configurable compliance workflows |
| Resident app and visitor management | Resident portal for dues and statements | Community app, Manager mobile platform, and Dwelling visitor management with access hardware |
| Resident payment methods | ACH from the resident's bank account | Cards, debit cards, ACH, and mobile wallets; a free recurring ACH option |
Accounting and Funds
FRONTSTEPS lists fund-based accounting, budgeting, AP invoice processing, AR payment posting, collections, and special assessments in Caliber. It does not describe how funds are kept apart or what stops an entry that mixes them.
Fund-based accounting, listed as a feature
Caliber's page lists fund-based accounting, budgeting, AP invoice processing, AR payment posting, collections, and special assessments. The pages reviewed do not describe the mechanism behind fund separation.
Fund assigned at the journal entry, checked before posting
The fund is set on each entry, so one chart of accounts serves operating, reserve, and special funds. Two guards check every posting: one refuses entries that mix operating and reserve cash, and one checks that the cash an entry touches belongs to the entry's fund. A refused entry is recorded with the reason.
Enforcement, Approvals, and Internal Controls
The approval workflows FRONTSTEPS describes are for architectural requests, not for money leaving the association. The pages reviewed publish no approval workflow for bills or payouts.
| Feature | CommunityPay | FRONTSTEPS |
|---|---|---|
| Rule check before an entry posts | 18 guards; eight apply to every entry, the rest by transaction type | No published feature |
| Entry with no recorded decision | Refused by the database | No published feature |
| Bill and payout approval | Board-set tiers by amount; one approval per person, held in the database; an approval is bound to amount, vendor, fund, and payout bank | Not published in the pages reviewed |
| Invoice intake | Emailed invoices are read twice and checked against 23 named rules; the outcome is submitted, drafted, or held with one sentence of reason | AP invoice processing listed; method not published |
Security Posture
FRONTSTEPS describes its payments as running through a PCI DSS compliant processor. CommunityPay publishes its controls.
| Control | CommunityPay | FRONTSTEPS |
|---|---|---|
| Payments security | Resident bank payments go to the association's own connected payments account; webhooks are signed and replay-protected | Integrates with a PCI DSS compliant processor |
| Sign-in | Authenticator-app sign-in with recovery codes; one-hour sessions that end at browser close; 30-minute lockout after five failed attempts | Not published in the pages reviewed |
| Money actions | A fresh authenticator code to pay a vendor, change a vendor's bank, change the transfer limit, pull from the association's bank, or reactivate a vendor. Text-message codes are not accepted for these. | Not published in the pages reviewed |
Audit Trail and Reporting
FRONTSTEPS gives board members access to "reports and insights" and does not list report types. CommunityPay records every decision, refusals included, and lets an outside accountant examine the books without editing them.
| Feature | CommunityPay | FRONTSTEPS |
|---|---|---|
| Record of decisions | Every decision recorded, including blocks; sealed in a hash chain since August 2026 | Not published in the pages reviewed |
| Outside examiner access | Token-gated, read-only CPA portal, scoped to a period | Not published in the pages reviewed |
| Whole-book export | Export with a hashed manifest | Not published in the pages reviewed |
| Financial statements | More than 30 financial reports, including changes in fund balances and reserve schedules | Board access to reports and insights; report types not listed |
Resale and Lender Documents, Debt, and Trust
The FRONTSTEPS pages reviewed do not describe resale certificates or lender questionnaires. HomeWiseDocs and CondoCerts, which handle resale disclosures, are separate sites, and we could not confirm from the sources reviewed how they relate to FRONTSTEPS.
| Feature | CommunityPay | FRONTSTEPS |
|---|---|---|
| Resale certificates | Generated from the association's own ledger at the moment of generation, mapped to the statute | No published feature |
| Condo questionnaire data | Fannie Mae 1076 and Freddie Mac 476 data from live records | No published feature |
| Debt subledger | Reconciled to the ledger, with bank payments matched to loans; covenant, payment-split, and interest guards | No published feature |
| Trust accounting | Three-way reconciliation: bank, ledger, client liabilities | No published feature |
| Risk score on certificates | CARI block embedded for consenting associations, bound into the certificate's hash | No published feature |