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Households

 

Basics

  • Households are collections of Contacts who share a primary residence. Though not a requirement, these Contacts are generally related by birth or marriage.
  • Households should have no more than two Contacts whose Household Position is Head of Household.

Household Fields

  • Household_ID: Unique database identifier for this Household. Used as the Family Call Number by many churches for Check-In.
  • Household Name: The last name of one of the Heads of Household.
  • Address: The physical address where this Household resides. (Commas separate the different fields that make up the full address.)
  • Home Phone: The home phone of the residence (can be the mobile phone of one of the heads if needed).
  • Congregation: The primary Congregation where this Household attends worship. See Managing Household Congregation for strategies on keeping this information up-to-date and Contact Tracking for why that matters.
  • Care Person: The individual in your church who is assigned the responsibility to contact and care for this household.
  • Household Source: How this Household heard about the church. This list is sometimes re-purposed to indicate the data entry tool or event that led to adding this Household to the database.
  • Family Call Number: Some churches use this for Check-In, but most do not.
  • Home Phone Unlisted: Set this value to True for the Home Phone to not appear in the online church directory. An individual can also mark this field as Unlisted on the My User Account Portal page.
  • Home Address Unlisted: Set this value to True for the Home Address does not appear in the online church directory. An individual can also mark this field as Unlisted on the My User Account Portal page.
  • Bulk Mail Opt-Out: Set this value to True for this address to be omitted from general mailings. Note that this field does not automatically remove them from mailings; each time users must actively exclude Bulk Email Opt Out addresses using the Advanced Search Tool to create views that honor this preference, or use the Trim Selection Tool to remove people with this preference from the selection. 
  • First Donation: The first date any member of the family made or scheduled a donation. This value is updated by a nightly routine.
  • Last Donation: The last date any member of the family made or scheduled a donation. This value is updated by a nightly routine.
  • Last Activity: The last date any member of this household gave, pledged, responded to an opportunity, attended an event, or joined a group. For some groups just being in them counts as recent activity. This is updated by a nightly routine.
  • Alternate Mailing Address: The alternate physical address where this Household resides for a portion of the year (college, summer home, snowbird, etc.). See Q8 in Households FAQ for how to add. Please Note: Many reports honor the alternate mailing address, but *not* all reports. See Q20 in Reports FAQ for a list.
  • Season Start: The date when the alternate mailing address will begin being used by specific reports. If blank, those reports will always use the alternate address.
  • Season End: The date when the alternate mailing address will stop being used by specific reports. If blank, an alternate address will be used after the season start or always.
  • Repeats Annually: If yes, the start and end dates (month and day) will be used each year.

Related Records

There are several records that are related to the Household record. Assuming appropriate Security Roles, these items appear as sub-pages in the Household record:

  • Contacts: In order to record a home phone, address and primary Congregation, a Contact record must belong to a Household record. Some applications do not display Contacts unless they are associated with a Household record (Check-In, Add/Edit Family Tool). A collection of Contacts that belong to a Household can be quickly viewed in an open Contact record > Primary Family sub-page and in an open Household record > Household Members sub-page.
  • Addresses: A single Address record is attached to a Household record. All Address records are available in the Lookup Values folder. Generally, an Address is associated with only one Household, but this is not a requirement. Households that use a specific Address appear in Lookup Values > Addresses > desired Address record > Households sub-page.
  • Household Care Log: When a Household Care Log entry is entered for a family, the record appears in the Care Log sub-page of the Household. All Household Care Log entries can be viewed in Care Cases > Household Care Log.
  • Other Households: Occasionally a Contact needs to be related to more than one Household. For example, non-custodial parents are in a different Household but need to be related to the Household the children are in for Check-In Kiosk search, Classroom Manager permitted guardians, and/or communication purposes. The Other Households sub-page allows you to relate one Household to another. 

Other Households

To add an "Other Household":

  1. Open the Contact who has "multiple" Households (e.g. a child of divorced parents).
  2. From the Other Households tab, click New.
  3. Search for and select the desired Household.
  4. Select the appropriate Household Position.
  5. Select the appropriate Household Type.
  6. If this situation is temporary or no longer is valid, add an End Date.
  7. Click Save.

If family members need to be moved from one Household to a separate Household, see Splitting Households.