Many communities require an architectural review committee (ARC) to approve construction on a property: a shed, a pool, a deck, new fencing, a roof color. Committee review turns a request into a vote. The committee is notified when a request arrives, each member records a decision, and the request is approved or denied once the votes meet the rules your community sets.
Every association runs this differently, so almost everything is configurable: who votes, how many must take part, what carries a decision, how long you have to decide, and whether the applicant can watch. Nothing changes until you turn it on.
This article is for leaders and committee members. For what the applicant sees and does, see "Applying for Architectural Approval".
Changing review settings requires the Manage Request Review permission. Voting needs no permission: anyone on the committee roster can vote, which keeps the roster the single place you manage membership. Publishing a decision is done by the committee's chair or anyone with Manage Request Review. Viewing all community requests requires the View Community Requests permission, though committee members can always open the requests of the type they review.
Each request type (General, Maintenance, and Architectural) has its own settings, so you can have a committee vote on architectural requests while maintenance stays with a single reviewer. This article uses architectural requests as the example.
In the main navigation menu, expand Requests and click Architectural.
Click the gear icon in the top-right corner to open Architectural Review.
Make your changes and click Save settings.
Start with one of three presets.
Single reviewer: A leader approves or denies directly, with no vote. This is how requests work before you change anything, so leaving it selected keeps your current process exactly as it is.
Committee vote (beta): The committee decides by majority, with a quorum.
Committee recommends (beta): The committee votes, then a board ratifies the result. Choose the Ratifying board and, optionally, a Board chair.
With Single reviewer, the page shows only How applications arrive and Project types. Everything else in this article, including voting, review deadlines, appeals, mailed notices, and deadlines for approved work, appears once you pick a committee preset.
Turn this on to name a form applications should come in on and to list what an application must include. It works with any preset.
Application form: choose the form. It must be published and set up to file this type of request. See "Collecting Requests Through a Form".
Should residents have to use it? Suggest it keeps the standard New Request form, with a note pointing to yours. Require it sends the New Request button to the form for everyone, leaders included, and the request can't be created any other way. Leaders with Manage Request Review keep a menu beside it: File for myself goes to the same form, because a leader applying about their own property is applying like anybody else, and File for a member opens the standard form, for an application that arrived by phone or on paper.
An application must include: click Add a document to build a checklist, such as a site plan, a survey, contractor insurance, or a neighbor's acknowledgment. Tick Required on the ones that are not optional. Applicants see the list on the New Request form, and on a request under committee review it becomes a checklist showing what is still outstanding.
If something required is missing: Warn, but allow the application to be marked ready, or Block marking it ready until it arrives or is waived. Blocking turns "ready for review" from one person's judgment into a check against your own list. It also holds an approval: you can't approve an application your own community calls incomplete, however the approval is reached, including automatically. Denying is still available, and so is asking for what is missing.
List the kinds of work you review, such as fences, roofs, or pools. Residents pick one when they apply, and the list can be filtered by it. On general and maintenance requests this section is called Categories.
Click Use a common starter list to begin with typical architectural project types.
Each type can show a published fee. It is shown for reference only and is not charged automatically. To collect a fee, add a Payment question to your application form.
A type can be marked protected, for kinds of work many states limit an association's power to refuse: solar, satellite dishes and antennas, drought-tolerant planting, flags and flagpoles, and EV charging. When a committee member denies a protected type, they're warned to check before denying it.
Pick a member group or a role as the voting roster, such as your Architectural Committee group. Using a group means turnover looks after itself: add or remove people from the group and the committee follows.
The roster preview shows exactly who would be voting right now.
Chair: pick one, from the roster itself. The chair marks an application ready for review and publishes the committee's decision. Anyone with Manage Request Review can also do both, chair or not.
Being a group admin has nothing to do with being chair. Group admin controls who may add and remove members of the group. Chair decides who publishes, so it is named rather than inferred.
Open groups can't be used. Any resident can join an open group instantly, which would let them give themselves a vote on a neighbor's request.
Members with a pending invitation to the community, or a pending request to join the group, don't count toward quorum and can't vote.
Quorum: the minimum number of votes before a result counts at all. Set as a number or a percentage of the roster.
Threshold: what share carries the decision. Choose a majority of the votes cast, a majority of the whole roster, a set percentage, or unanimous.
If the vote ties: The chair breaks the tie, or Leave it open.
When voting closes: When every vote is in, or the window closes, or As soon as a quorum decides it.
When the threshold is reached: hold for the chair to publish a written decision, or decide automatically.
Abstentions count toward quorum but toward neither side of the threshold, which matches how a committee meeting actually runs. Each request states the rule in plain words underneath the vote count, so nobody has to remember the configuration.
Under Days to decide, set how many days the committee has. Leave it blank for no deadline. Committee members are warned 7, 3, and 1 days before it closes.
The clock starts either when the request is submitted, or When the application is marked ready for review. Many governing documents use the second, because a half-finished application shouldn't start a countdown.
A running clock pauses automatically whenever the committee asks the applicant for more information, and restarts when they reply, add files, or edit the request, extended by exactly the time they took.
When the window closes with no decision: Nothing (the request just shows as overdue), Notify the committee, Record the committee's vote as the decision, or Approve the request automatically.
Decide whether an owner can ask for a decision to be reconsidered. In several states this is a statutory right rather than a courtesy. It is off by default.
Who hears an appeal: usually your board. It shouldn't be the same people who made the decision, though some associations genuinely have nobody else. The page shows who that works out to be, and marks anyone who also sits on the committee. These are warnings, not refusals: a small association with one body can save and carry on.
Who chairs the appeal body: pick one from that body's own membership. They schedule the hearing and publish the outcome. Anyone with Manage Request Review can also do both.
Which decisions can be appealed: denials only, denials and conditional approvals, or any decision.
How an appeal is decided: a vote by the appeal body, or a hearing the owner can attend.
Deadlines: how long the owner has to appeal, counted from the decision, and how long the body then has to decide it. The body is reminded 7 days, 1 day, and on the day the decision is due.
Once appeals are on, every decision that can be appealed carries the appeal paragraph automatically, in the email and on any letter you send, with a real date rather than "within 30 days".
The hearing
These settings appear only when appeals are decided at a hearing.
Notice before the hearing: a hearing can't be scheduled sooner than this. It is the owner's right to be told before they have to turn up and argue, so it is enforced rather than suggested.
Aim to hear within: counted from the appeal being filed. A later date is flagged, not blocked. Once you're already past the window, every remaining date breaks it, and refusing them all would leave the owner with no hearing at all.
A postponement can move it by and Postponements each side may take: the owner and the appeal body get the allowance separately, so a board that used its own hasn't used up the owner's.
Put the hearing on a calendar: off by default. You can show it to the appeal body only, or post it to the whole community. Posting it publicly is what an open-meeting rule asks for, and it also tells every neighbor which property is being argued about, so it's a choice you make deliberately.
A leader can always mail a printed decision notice to the applicant from a decided request. Under Offer certified mail, choose Never (email and in-app only), Offer it on any decision notice, or Offer it, and pre-select it on denials. Some states accept certified mail as delivery of a denial, and the tracking number is the proof.
Nothing here ever sends anything on its own. Postage is charged to your community, so a person always reads the notice and presses the button. A standard letter costs $2.25 and a certified letter $11.95.
You can require work to start within so many days and finish within so many more. Approvals commonly expire if nothing happens, and the dates appear on the request as a countdown once it is approved.
The count starts at the decision, or, where appeals are enabled, when the appeal window closes. Work shouldn't be expected to start while the decision can still be overturned. The request states which applies.
Reminders: choose how many days ahead to remind the owner. They also get one notice when a deadline passes, and then nothing further.
Extensions: allow a leader to push the dates out, up to the number you set, with a reason. The extension and its reason are recorded on the request.
Approve and Deny are always available. You can also enable Approve with conditions and Request more information.
Under Can the applicant watch the vote?, choose whether the applicant sees votes as they come in or whether deliberation stays private until a decision is published. Private is the default. Either way the published decision is always shown to the applicant.
Requests can be submitted with the New Request form or through your application form. A form is the better option for architectural review, because you can ask for exactly what a reviewer needs: a description of the work, materials and colors, a site plan or survey, photographs, contractor details, and estimated dates. Each submission arrives as a request with the committee already notified and the files attached.
Where you've listed required documents, the New Request form shows them before anything is submitted, under What this application needs. Nothing there blocks filing. A resident who can't yet lay hands on a survey must still be able to start, or the checklist becomes a reason people never file at all.
A leader filing on somebody's behalf is asked Who is this for?, and can name the resident who asked or leave it as the household. The applicant is who an appeal is filed for and who the record names years later, and an application taken over the phone is the one case nothing else can work it out from.
Requests that were already pending when you turned committee review on can be handed to the committee with Send to committee review on the request.
The Committee Review card on the request shows the checklist and its progress: Sent, Ready, Voting, Decided.
When the applicant answers a required item, they point it at the file they attached, and the checklist names that file.
A leader can click mark received without an attachment. That attests the association has it, by email, at a meeting, or already on file, and is the way in for everything that doesn't arrive as an upload.
Click not needed to waive an item for this request. You're asked why, because a waiver is a decision somebody made and should be legible years later, and only a leader can undo one.
If your clock starts on completeness, the chair or a leader clicks Mark ready for review once the application has everything the committee needs. This starts the review window. It doesn't hold up voting: the committee can start looking while one document is outstanding.
Each committee member opens the request and records Approve, Approve with conditions, Deny, or Abstain. A denial or a conditional approval must say why, and that reason is shown to the applicant with the decision. The reason travels; the name behind it doesn't, unless the community lets applicants watch the vote.
Votes can be changed at any time until the decision is published. Committee members are notified in the app, by push, and by email when a request needs their vote, following each member's own notification preferences.
Once the vote reaches a result, the chair publishes it. The applicant is emailed the outcome along with the conditions or the reasons behind it, and the request closes. That happens however the decision is reached, including when the last vote carries it automatically or the review deadline decides it.
The written basis starts filled in from what the committee wrote on the ballots that voted that way, without their names. Edit it freely: it is what the owner reads, and it goes out over the chair's name. Ballots cast against plans that have since been revised are left out, because they answered a different question.
Approve or Approve with conditions, where the conditions are recorded alongside the approval.
Deny, which requires naming the guideline the denial rests on and which part of the proposal fails it. You can also say what changes would make it approvable. All of this is shown to the applicant and forms the written basis for the decision.
Request more information sits separately, as a link below the decision buttons, because it doesn't decide anything. Type what the applicant needs to provide and click Send request. The request stays open, the votes already cast are kept, and the review clock pauses until the applicant replies, adds files, or edits the request. Until then, the card shows the request as waiting on them rather than prompting anyone to vote.
If voting has started but stalled without a result, the chair can use Decide without a vote result to break the deadlock.
Once a decision is published, a Mailed Notices card appears on requests about a property. Click Decision to draft the notice, read it, edit it, and send it. You can't draft, send, or cancel a notice about a request from your own household.
The draft is assembled from what was actually decided rather than left blank: the outcome, the guideline relied on, the part of the proposal that fails it, what changes would make it approvable, and the appeal rights with a real date.
Where you've set deadlines for approved work, an approved request keeps a short tracker: Approved, Started, Finished, Signed off. The dates it counts against are shown with it.
The owner reports that work has started and that it is complete. They're the ones doing it, and making a leader record every start is how a deadline stops being tracked at all.
A leader clicks Record final inspection: does what was built match what was approved? Answer Built as approved or Differs from the approval. A deviation has to say what differs, and the owner is shown it.
Only the association can record an inspection. Until somebody does, the request says so: "Nobody has checked" and "we checked and it is fine" are different answers.
If extensions are allowed, use Extend this approval with a reason. Both deadlines move.
Recording a deviation changes nothing about the approval. It's a finding, not a penalty: the request stays approved and no date moves. If it needs enforcing, the tool for that is a violation, raised deliberately.
An applicant can withdraw a request at any point before it is decided. It closes without a decision and appears under the Withdrawn tab, the property record shows it as withdrawn rather than denied, the review clock stops, and the committee is told.
A leader with Manage Request Review can record a withdrawal that arrived by phone or in person, using Withdraw on the request.
A withdrawal recorded in error can be reopened. Reopening sends the request back to voting and adds the time it spent withdrawn back onto the deadline.
Once a decision has been published there is nothing left to withdraw or reopen. What the applicant has then is an appeal, or Resubmit with changes, which starts a new application linked to the old one.
When appeals are enabled, a decided request that can be appealed carries an Appeal card. The applicant sees the deadline and an Appeal this decision button. The appeal body sees what has been filed.
The applicant files within the window, and must give their grounds. A leader can record an appeal that arrived on paper, naming the member who filed it or recording it for the household as a whole, so an association whose owners don't use the app can still honor the right.
Filing reopens the request, because it is genuinely undecided again until the body rules. The committee's own record is untouched: their decision, their reasons, and their votes stay exactly as they were.
The appeal body votes on its own card, against the same quorum and threshold, choosing Uphold the appeal, Uphold with conditions, Let the decision stand, or Abstain. A board member who also sits on the committee keeps both ballots; voting on the appeal doesn't overwrite how they voted the first time.
Where your community holds hearings, the appeal body chair uses Schedule the hearing to set a date and place. The owner and the body are both notified and reminded 7, 3, and 1 days before, and on the day.
Move the hearing must give the owner the full notice period again, because they're being told afresh when to appear.
Postpone is different: it's the owner's or the body's right to put an already-noticed hearing off by a short period, within each side's allowance. It doesn't restart the notice period. The owner asks with Ask to postpone.
Click Hearing on the Mailed Notices card to draft and mail a printed notice of hearing, which states the date, the place, that the owner may attend and be heard, and their right to postpone.
After the hearing, Record the hearing: who attended and what happened. The minutes are kept whether or not the body decides that day.
Use Record the outcome and then Publish outcome. The appeal body records whether the decision is affirmed, modified, or reversed, in whole or in part, and what the request becomes. A denial that survives or arrives on appeal still owes a written basis.
The applicant is notified, and so is the original committee. An appellant can withdraw their appeal, which leaves the committee's decision standing.
A committee member who lives at the property under review is recused automatically. They can't vote, they're removed from the quorum count so they don't hold the vote up, and they can't see the committee's private discussion of their own request. This applies to everyone in that household, not only the person who filed it. The same rule applies to the appeal body.
Filing a request on someone's behalf doesn't make you a party to it. A leader who enters an application for a resident still votes normally, and the request shows the household as the applicant with a note that you filed it.
If the application is edited or its documents change after voting has started, Communitrak records a new revision and the votes already cast stop counting. Each reviewer sees that the plans changed, which revision they voted on, and is asked to look again.
A vote is consent to a specific set of plans. Without this, an approval recorded against one drawing could quietly carry over to a different one. The published decision names the revision it was made on.
Architectural requests are recorded against the property, not the household. When a home changes hands, the history stays at the address.
On a property's page, the Request History card lists everything filed for that address.
On an architectural request, click Property history under the address to see prior requests for the same property.
Each entry shows the outcome, the date, any conditions, and the vote it rested on.
A request that went to appeal reads as one entry with both halves, such as "Denied, reversed on appeal".
A withdrawn request reads as withdrawn, in neutral, beside the denials in red.
This is what lets you answer "was the deck at 42 Oak ever approved?" years later, for an owner who wasn't the applicant.
Every capability on this page is off until you turn it on. A community that has never opened these settings behaves exactly as it always has.
Turning committee review on doesn't affect requests already decided. Requests still pending can be sent to the committee from the request itself.
Changing quorum or threshold doesn't re-decide a vote already in progress. Each request keeps the rules that applied when it opened.
Changing the review deadline settings does apply to open requests, but never retroactively: switching on a 30-day window won't instantly expire a request that has been open longer.
Appeal rules are read live right up to the moment an appeal is filed. From filing onward they're frozen: the notice period and the postponement allowance are the terms somebody has already acted on.
A hearing time is always your community's local time, on screen and on the notice, whatever timezone the reader is in.
While the vote is private, the applicant sees that the request is with the committee, and the decision once it's published, but not who voted or how.
The Approve and Reject buttons that leaders use without committee review are hidden once a committee owns the outcome, so a single leader can't bypass a vote in progress.
Violations don't go through committee review. A violation is the association citing a homeowner, not a homeowner applying for something.
Reminders about hearings and approval deadlines are sent once each.
If your community's account is read-only because of a billing issue, voting and publishing are disabled until the account is back in good standing.
If you have questions or need help, chat with Communitrak Support from any page using the messenger icon in the bottom-right corner.
