Creating and Managing Voter Groups

Your voters are the people who can take part in an assembly, and they live inside voter groups. A group is both an organising bucket and a definition of how its members vote. Getting the group right is the foundation for accurate quorum and results, so it is worth a few minutes up front.

Voter type: Company vs Association

Every group has a voter type, and it changes what a voter is:

• Company — members are shareholders. Each has a share capital (their holding) and voting rights (the weight their vote carries). Company groups can optionally use share classes to derive voting weight from capital. This is the model for A/S and ApS companies and other share-based structures.
• Association — members vote one each. There is no capital and no share classes; every member carries a weight of one. This is the model for associations, clubs, and most member organisations.

The type is seeded from your organisation's type when you create a group, but you can change it. If you are unsure which to pick, ask a simple question: does voting power depend on how much someone owns? If yes, it's a Company group; if everyone is equal, it's an Association.

Creating a group with the guided steps

New groups are created through a short guided flow rather than a single form, because the details depend on the type you choose:

1. Name the group and pick its voter type (Company or Association).
2. Define share classes — Company groups only. If different shares carry different voting weight, create the classes here. This step is skipped entirely for Association groups, and is optional for companies that vote directly. See Understanding Share Classes and Voting Rights.
3. Add voters. Enter the first members now, or create an empty group and add them later.
4. Review and create. The group, its classes, and its voters are created together in one step.

Because a company has no automatic "default" group, every voter belongs to a group you have chosen — which keeps your register clear about who votes where.

Adding voters

For a small register, add voters one at a time. The fields you see depend on the group's type:

• Association — name and email. Each member's weight is set to one automatically.
• Company without share classes — name, email, share capital, and voting rights.
• Company with share classes — name, email, share capital, and the voter's class. Assembley computes the voting weight from the class.

Importing a register from CSV or Excel

For a real register, import a file (.csv, .xlsx, or .xls). The expected columns adapt to the group's type, so the import always matches how that group votes:

• Association → Name, Email.
• Company without classes → Name, Email, Share Capital, Voting rights.
• Company with classes → Name, Email, Share Capital, Class. The Class column must match a class you created for the group; Assembley looks it up and computes each voter's weight. Rows with an unknown class name are flagged and skipped so you can fix them, while the valid rows still import.

A few habits make imports painless: keep the header row at the top (data starts on row two), it's the column order that's read rather than the header names, and the file should hold one voter per row.

Groups, eligibility, and reuse

A voter group is reusable. When you create an assembly you can restrict eligibility to a single group, so one register can serve several different meetings — for example, a shareholders' AGM and a separate board election. Deleting a group never deletes its voters; they simply become ungrouped and can be reassigned.

Where to go next

If your group uses weighted voting or multiple share classes, read Understanding Share Classes and Voting Rights next. New to the platform? Start with Getting Started with Assembley.