Send members a plain-English budget letter

The member letter turns your budget into something homeowners can actually read: a short, warm, plain-English note that explains what changed and why, on your association's letterhead, ready to mail with the budget PDF.

It is drafted for you, grounded on the budget's REAL numbers — every figure and every reason comes from an actual line in your budget. Nothing is invented.

To create a member letter:
1. Open Accounting → Budgeting and select the budget you want to send.
2. Next to Export, press "Member letter".
3. Press "Generate letter". In a few seconds you get a first draft that walks members through the year: the totals, the dues change (if any), the per-unit-per-month assessment (this year, last year, and the change), the reason each line moved (pulled from the line's own note), and any planned projects — including whether a project is funded from reserves already collected rather than from a dues increase.
4. Review and edit the text. Use the Preview / Edit toggle: Preview shows the letter the way members will read it, with real bold section headers; Edit lets you change the wording (wrap a heading in **double asterisks** to make it bold). The board owns the final wording. Your edits save automatically; watch the "Saved" pill.
5. When the wording is right, press "Mark as final".
6. Share it. You can Copy the whole letter to your clipboard, or download the letter on its own as a PDF or a Word (.docx) document, or save it to Turtini Docs to keep editing it there. To send it with the budget, press "Download member packet (letter + budget)".

The per-unit-per-month figure:
For a community association, the letter and panel show what each owner actually pays per month — computed live from the assessment the budget balances to, divided by your unit count. It always matches the on-screen budget grid, even after you apply a reserve contribution or re-solve the budget.

What's in the member packet:
The packet is the full transparency document, so owners can reproduce every number themselves. It contains your letterhead cover letter, this year's budget next to last year's approved budget, a line-by-line year-over-year comparison (dollar and percent change per account), the latest actual amounts recorded in the ledger so far this year (budget vs actual), and a methodology appendix that spells out exactly how each number was obtained — the roll-forward from prior actuals, the inflation index applied per category, how the assessment was solved to balance, why reserve-funded capital is excluded from operating, the loan schedule, and the per-unit split. Every page carries the Verified-by-Turtini stamp.

What it will and won't say:
• It only cites figures and reasons that appear in the budget. If the data doesn't explain why a line moved, the letter says the amount changed without guessing.
• Reserve-funded projects are described as paid from reserves already collected — not as a dues increase.
• It is a financial-planning summary for members, not a structural or safety assessment. It never certifies a building component or predicts a failure.

Regenerating:
Press "Regenerate from live numbers" any time the budget changes — the draft is rebuilt from the current figures. (Your previous edits are replaced, so finalize once the budget is settled.)

Downloading the budget without the letter is unchanged — use the normal Export → PDF. The letter and the year-over-year comparison are only included when you download the member packet.