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Author: Joel Kristenson
Last Updated: 2017-04-25
Overview
This article will teach you how to see if your database has been householded, how to automatically household a database by certain preferences and how to delete and recreate household records.
Householding is a labor of love. The system does a lot of the heavy lifting by looking for contacts that live at the same home address, and creating the separate household record in your database, but it’s up to you to keep them up-to-date by maintaining the correct Salutation, and Envelope Names.
IMPORTANT: Prior to householding you'll want to make sure the address records for each member of a household are as consistent as possible. For example a street address could have a minor difference such as St. vs Street. Click here learn how to automatically conform addresses in your database.
Outline
#1 Check if your Database has been Householded
#2 Automatically Household your Database
#3 Steps to Delete and Re-Create Household Records
#4 Related Resources
#1 Check if your Database has been Householded
Under the Application Menu follow Voter/Donor > Households
Click [Search] from the search tool strip and if it returns zero records then your database has not been householded. If it returns a list of records it means your database has been householded at one point but there could be records that are not householded if they were added after the last householding process was run.
NOTE: Subsequent executions of the householding tool will ONLY household those records not previously household - in other words, new records added to your database since the last execution of the householding tool.
#2 Automatically Household your Database
Under the Application Menu follow System Manager > Tools > Create Household Records (this assumes you have security access to this menu item – if not contact your DB administrator.)
Select your preferences on how you want to Household the database within the Create Household Record window. Create households where… “Voters have the same address” is selected by default when householding.
In this example I chose the options that “Voters must have the same last name to be considered a household” and ”Create FORMAL salutations and envelopes when appropriate data available (each record MUST have a title”) were selected.
Click [OK] located in the bottom right of the Create Household Record window to begin the process. You will be prompted with a warning message, click [OK] if you want to proceed.
After running the process you will be presented with the results, click [OK] to finish.
You’re finished householding all records in your database that were not previously assigned to a household.
IMPORTANT: As new records are added to your database, you should periodically run householding. This can be done anytime - but at least before you attempt to print letters and before exporting your data as a householded list.
#3 Steps to Delete and Recreate Households
Under the Application Menu follow Voter/Donor > Households and click [Search] to pull down a list of all your householded records. You can also pull up a list of specific household records if you want to delete them in parts rather than as a whole.
Click the [File] drop-down from search tool strip and select Delete.
Trail Blazer will prompt you with a warning message click [OK] to move forward with deleting the householded records in your list. This does not delete the individual donor/voter/contact record. It deletes ONLY the house hold relationships.
Let Trail Blazer work its magic – it will display the status of the deletion process and it will notify you when the process is complete - with the results; click [OK] to proceed.
Click [Search] from the household search window and the record count should now be equal to 0 if you deleted all household records.
Now you can go through the same process as described earlier in this document on how to automatically create household records by the preferences of your choice.
Tip: Set the age and gender for your records before running householding and you will have a better chance the order of the household members is correct, you can do this from the Donors/Voters list:
#4 Related Resources
Video: Households – Delete and Recreate
Video: Households – Drag n Drop
Video: Households – Combine More Than 5 Members
Article: Splitting Couples Into Separate Records
Article: Household Automatic vs User Managed
Article: Household Export
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