View Household Screen

Households Defined

A household is a group of people living at the same address.

Households are uniquely identified by their primary contact.

The primary contact is a member of the household.

Since primary contacts are used to uniquely identify the household, a person can be the primary contact of only one household.

Examples of members of a household include spouses, children, grandchildren, etc.

A person can be different type of member in more than one household.  For example, a person could be the child of more than one household (if the parents are divorced).

Purpose of Households

Households are used in target marketing to identify people who live with other people.  For example, with households, you can target fathers with sons between the ages of 6 and 12.

Households are also used for phone solicitations to gather together all phone calls for every person in the same household.  This is helpful because it will allow you to make one phone call to a household where you have targeted more than one person, rather than making separate phone calls to each person.

Automatically creating households

Use the auto-fill feature to automatically create households.  The auto-fill feature will:

Group all people living at the same address into a single household.

Automatically designate the oldest person as the primary contact.  You can change the primary contact by editing it later.

Not assume the relationship of any of the other members.  You will need to fill in the relationship of the other members (see the '

Editing a Household' section below).

Adding a household (one at a time)

You can manually add a household at any time by clicking the 'Add' button.  The auto-fill feature above does not group people together unless their address, city, and state are entered exactly the same.  If you have people who belong together in a household and their addresses are not typed in the same, you will need to manually add them into a household.  If you want add a person to an existing household, see editing a household below.  To add a household:

Click 'Add'.  The 'Select Primary Contact' screen will appear.

Select the person who will be used to uniquely identify this household.  The 'Add Household' screen will appear.

Add as many other members as you want by clicking the 'Add Member' button once for each new member.

As you add each member, fill in the relationship of the new member to the primary contact.

Editing a household

Click the 'Edit' button to change any information about the household such as who the primary contact is or specify the relationship of some other household member.

Deleting a household

Click the 'Delete' button to delete a household.  Deleting a household will not delete the people from your database.  It will simply 'ungroup' the members and delete the household.

View Households | Add | Select Primary Contact (Screen): Help

Select Person

To select a Person, find and click on the Person, then click "Select".

If the Person you are looking for is not in the list, click the "Add" button to add them to the list.

After you have finished adding the new Person, it will appear in the list so that you can select them.

View Households | Add | Select Primary Contact | Merge Duplicates: Help

Remove Duplicate People

Purpose of the Remove Duplicate People Tool

It is important to make sure all people in Bowler TRAC appear in the '

View People' list only once.  If a person appears more than once, you might contact the same person multiple times in a marketing plan.  You also may not get that person's complete history because part of the history is attached to one person, and the other to the duplicate person.

The Remove Duplicate People Tool can greatly help reduce the number of duplicate people in that list by helping you with two important tasks

1.        Identify which people appear in the list more than once.

2.        Merge the information from both people into one person.

Finding Duplicates

To identify which people are really the same, simply click the 'Find Duplicates' button.  Bowler TRAC will compare people who look similar and present you with a list of possible duplicates.

Finding duplicates using computer software is a balancing act.  If you '

cast too wide a net' you will identify a lot of people who are not really duplicates.  If you do not cast the net wide enough, you miss people who really are duplicates.  Bowler TRAC uses methods which attempt to strike a good balance.  But since this is not an exact science, it will not find all duplicates and it will identify some people as duplicates who really are not.

Note: you can click the 'Find Duplicates' button as often as you wish.  There is no harm in re-running this function.  It is a good idea to do this regularly.

Reviewing (Merging) Possible Duplicates

Since identifying duplicates is not an exact science, Bowler TRAC does not automatically merge potential duplicates.  Rather, it presents a list of potential duplicates and allows you review them and make the final decision.  To review and merge a duplicate pair, highlight the pair in the list and click the 'Review' button.  You will then be presented with more information and given the option to merge the two people or to mark them as 'not the same'.

Re-reviewing Duplicates After They Have Been Marked 'Not the Same'

As you review possible duplicates, you will either merge them or mark the pair as 'not the same'.  If you want to re-review pairs you previously marked 'not the same' you can uncheck to box labeled 'Hide pairs marked not the same'.  Now, all previously identified duplicates will be displayed and can be reviewed again.

View Households | Select Primary Contact (Screen) | Edit: Help

Edit/Add Household

Adding a household

You can manually add a household at any time by clicking the 'Add' button.  The auto-fill feature does not group people together unless their address, city, and state are entered exactly the same.  If you have people who belong together in a household and their addresses are not typed in the same, you will need to manually add them into a household.  If you want add a person to an existing household, see editing a household below.  To add a household:

The 'Select Primary Contact' screen will appear.

Select the person who will be used to uniquely identify this household.  The '

Add Household' screen will appear.

Add as many other members as you want by clicking the 'Add Member' button once for each new member.

As you add each member, fill in the relationship of the new member to the primary contact.

Editing a household

Click the 'Edit' button to change any information about the household such as who the primary contact is or specify the relationship of some other household member.