Question

Best Practices for Householding in Copper

  • 18 March 2022
  • 1 reply
  • 60 views

Householding is the process of organizing shared relationships under a common hierarchical structure like the following:

Three individual records identifying clients living at the same address who we know as family members.

  • Doe, Chris | 123 Anystreet | Anytown, USA
  • Doe, Jane | 123 Anystreet | Anytown, USA
  • Doe, John | 123 Anystreet | Anytown, USA

Householding links the three records (and any future related records) so that if I want to direct mail the family I send to only one physical address and not 3 separate addresses.

  • Smith
  • 123 Anystreet
  • Anytown, USA
    • John
    • Jane
    • Chris
    •  
    •  
    •   

The “big idea” here is to understand and report on the overall relationship value of a related client set.  If I have twenty clients at a company, then I want to know the relational value of that company by virtue of the individual client records, etc.  This works for family units, businesses, hobbies (golf, cycling, etc) and other identifiers that could help me better understand how my clients’ relationships hold value.  At its basic level, it eliminates duplicate physical addresses.  The concept of householding is not new and I’m sure there are ways to use tags, but I’m looking to Copper for a more formal and structured approach to householding.  I formerly used Solve360.com to relate and report on households. You can see a demo at their site.  Any ideas…?


1 reply

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Hey @Bruce,

Apologies for the late response, I was trying to find the best way to do what it is you’re trying to do with householding in Copper. First, I want to say that householding is not formally introduced in Copper you would like it to be. We can try to find something close, but it won’t be automatic as of yet.

Second thing to note is that you’re able to rename a record type to whatever you wish. That means “Company/Companies” can be changed to “Household/Households”. I understand that you’re trying to nest households within companies though, so that may not work for you.

Tags would be the easiest thing to implement, but we also have connect fields to connect any record type to any record type; this includes company to company as well. 

Let’s take John, Jane and Chris from your example. They all work at the same company, and they’re all in the same household. I’d initially put them in a company like “Company HH (Doe)” or “Doe Household”, and then link it with Company HH using connect fields.
 

The connect field can be named anything.


This way, Doe Household has its own physical address, and they’re still related to Company HH.

If this isn’t what you’re looking for, I can convert your question into an idea so that the product team can take a look at it.

Let me know if you have any questions!

Best,
 

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