Learn how to navigate Households in this step-by-step guide. This help guide will cover how to create a household, add members to a household, and managing households.
Recommended Reading Before You Start
Content
Instructions
Introduction to Households
Households are a way of keeping track of the relationships amongst individuals who live together at the same address. In Neon CRM, household tracking allows you to:
- See the total involvement of a household with your organization in one place
- Simplify print mailings by sending only one letter per household
Please keep in mind:
- A household is NOT a person. Therefore, it cannot donate, register for events, or purchase store products.
- A household is NOT an account. It does not count towards your total number of Neon CRM accounts.
- A household's email address is tied to the same person as the physical address: the household primary contact (for tax purposes, each individual needs a separate receipt for donations, so households should not be used for this anyway).
- You can have household memberships that apply to every account linked to a household. This is called a Household Group Membership.
- An individual can belong to more than one household. However, an individual cannot be the primary contact (address holder) of more than one household. Primary contacts can be added as a secondary contact in other households.
- If an individual belongs to more than one household, their transactions will be applied to all households. Keep this in mind when running reports with totals.
There are several ways to create households in Neon:
- Clicking the "New Household" button from a Neon account page.
- Importing "Household Name" or "Household Salutation".
- Adding a Household Group Membership.
- Creating an event and choosing the option to track the relationship between the registrant and attendees.
Once a household is created in one of these ways, you can then add family members to that household. This guide walks you through this process of creating households and adding contacts to them.
Creating Households
A household is created from an Individual's account. Once you create a household, you can add additional members to the household.
1. To create a household, Navigate to Accounts and select Accounts.
2. Select an Individual's Account.
3. Select New Household in the Household Contacts section.
4. On the next screen, define the Household Name and Household Salutation, which can then be used in reports and in mail merges. The Household Address is the primary address on the head of household's account.
5. When you're finished, click Create Household. Once a household has been created, the Household Contacts section of the individual's account page will change:
6. The individual on whose account the household is created automatically becomes the first member of this household and is thus the household primary contact (address holder).
Adding Household Contacts
1. Now that you have created the household, you can add additional household contacts such as spouses and children. To do this, open the Actions Menu and select New Household Contact.
2. The New Household Contact window will appear with basic name fields and a space to designate the Role of the household contact in relation to the head of household, and the dates (if applicable) of the relationship.
3. Start typing the name of your new contact in the First Name field. Neon CRM will search for an existing account in the system with the same name.
4. If you find a match, select it from the list, assign a Role and click Create Contact. The existing account will be added to the household. Each account will still remain separate and can be managed independently.
If you do not find a match, select the "Create: " option to create a new household contact record. More contact fields will be available to populate at this point.
Note: There is a Create a Neon CRM account checkbox option on this form (per the above image). If you check this box, a separate Individual account will be created for the new contact. The new account will be added to the household, but each account can be managed independently.
If you leave the box unchecked, the new contact will exist in the system as an Additional Contact Record.
About Additional Household Contact Records:
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Household contact records exists solely within a Neon CRM account and do not count toward your account total.
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You can only track basic contact information for additional contacts and they cannot register for events, make store purchases, etc.
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Typically, Additional Contact is used for spouses who do not have their own interactions with your organization or minor children who do not need to have their own "full" account.
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These additional household contact records exist within the household only, so you cannot search on household contact records in Neon reports.
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You can view household contact records in the Additional Contact Report I and Additional Contact Report II.
- If you search for an additional household contact record in the account search field, that should pull up the primary household contact's Neon account.
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When searching for an individual account, the Contact Name column in the search results will display the name of the account in addition to the name(s) of any of their household contact records.
5. When you've completed the form, click Create Contact. The Household Contacts page now shows the updated view.
If you did not create an account for the new household contact, their name will appear as plain text. If they do have their own Individual account, their name will appear as a link that you can click to access it.
Converting Additional Household Contact Records into Individual Accounts
At any time, you can convert an additional household contact record to an Individual Account in Neon CRM.
1. To do this, open the Actions Menu next to that contact's name in the Household view and select Convert to Individual Account.
2. This will bring up a confirmation screen. Click Confirm if you want to continue.
3. The new individual account will include the contact's personal information and address as well as the household address. They will maintain their relationship role and connection to the household.
Managing Households
You have the following additional options to manage your households:
View Household Details
1. Clicking the name of the household at the top of the Household Contacts page will take you to the household detail page. You can do this from any household contact's account.
2. From here, you can see the entire activity of a household as a whole. You can also edit the household and add contacts from here. The Household view page lists any transactions and includes household summary data. You can also make changes to the household from this page.
Information available from the household view page:
- Basic Information - edit the Household Name, Household Salutation, and Household Address or delete the household.
- Household Contacts - edit or delete existing household contacts and add new ones.
- Donations, Membership History, Event Registrations, and Purchase History - itemized and summary data for the entire household.
- Activities - lists any activities of household contacts.
Edit Household
1. You can edit household information from either the Household Contacts section of the Account page, or when editing the basic Account details of any of the contacts.
2. A household's address is linked to one of the individuals within it. This individual is referred to as the household primary contact (address holder). When you edit the household, you can select who the address links to.
Updating multiple contact addresses
1. If you update any contact's primary address, you can apply the same update to the primary addresses of any or all household contacts.
2. After you update the address, go to the Household Contacts section of the account.
3. Click the Actions menu of the updated contact and select Apply Address to Contacts.
4. On the next page, you will be able to choose which contact(s) to update. You can select individual contacts (option A below), or click Select All (option B).
5. Once you've made your selection(s), click Update Address.
6. You will see a confirmation window, with a notice that a new home address will be added to any contacts with individual accounts and made primary.
7. Click Confirm. All of your selected household contacts will now be updated with the new address.
Delete a Household
1. To delete a household and all contact relationships associated with it, open the Actions Menu at the top of the Household Contacts section and select Delete Household.
2. When you delete a household, Neon CRM removes the connection between the individuals within the household. It does not remove the accounts or any transaction history. It will, however, delete any Additional Contacts within the household.
Viewing All Households
To see a quick list of all households in your system, navigate to: Accounts Households.
Reporting on Households
1. Household totals can be accessed by navigating to Reports and selecting New Report.
2. Under Communication and Mailing, select Household Report.
Available Reporting Data Columns
The following household data is available in a household report:
- Household ID
- Household Name
- Household Salutation
- Household Address
- Primary Contact Email
- Primary Contact Phone
- Primary Contact Preferred Name
- Primary Contact Account Custom Fields
You can also access the following totals for both households and non-householded accounts:
Quantity of the following transactions (Count) for current and last fiscal and calendar years:
- Donations
- Memberships
- Event Registrations
- Store Purchases
- All transaction types combined
- Donations
- Memberships
- Event Registrations
- Store Purchases
- All transaction types combined
Total Amount; Total Count:
- Donations
- Memberships
- Event Registrations
- Store Purchases
- All transaction types combined
Last Amount; Last Count:
- Donations
- Memberships
- Event Registrations
There are also options that allow you to define who you want to be displayed in your report results:
- Display household records only limits the possible search results to householded records only.
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Display household records AND accounts that do not belong to households will generate a report of householded accounts, non-householded individuals, and companies.
- The Record Type column will show "Household", "Individual Account", or "Company Account" for each row.
- For company accounts, the Household Name/Full Name column will show the company name.
- For company accounts, the Household Name/First Name and Household Salutation/First Name columns will display the first name of the company's primary contact.
- For company accounts, the Household Name/Last Name and Household Salutation/Last Name columns will display the last name of the company's primary contact.
- Search all linked household accounts tells Neon to search all household contacts for qualifying records. For example, if you check this box and set criteria for donations within the past year, the report will return records for all households in which any contact has a qualifying donation. If you do not check the box, the report will only look at the primary contact's record for householded accounts.
Mailing to Households
One of the primary purposes of tracking households is to reduce mailing costs by sending a single letter to a household, as opposed to several. We have added a tab to the Household Report to make creating mailing lists easy.
1. To run a Household Report, go to Reports and select New Report.
2. Navigate to Communication And Mailing and select Household Report.
3. You'll see a summary of the default columns and search criteria. Click Edit under either to narrow down the scope or the columns.
4. Once you select the appropriate options, click Run Report.
5. The households will display using the report output display and the Household options that you selected. You can easily generate a mailing to this list by exporting to Excel or CSV or generating a Mailing in Neon.