How to use householding

Householding is the process of grouping people who live in the same house or apartment.

Updated over a week ago

 Table of Contents

Where to Start

To turn householding on in your nation, go to Settings > Defaults > Basics.

Check the box next to Enable householding and click the Save settings button to save your changes. There is no charge for this feature.

Household rules:

1. Your database finds households based on a person's primary address.

2. If more than twenty people have the same address, they will be listed separately. We assume this is an apartment building or other locations with people who would need their mail addressed separately. 

3. A person's address must have a street number, street name, and postal code in order for a household to be generated.

4. When you export by household, the name field will be determined by the number of people in the household and their last names. Two people with same last name - first names sorted alphabetically, e.g. "Bob and Sally Giraffe," three or more people with the same last name - the last name family, e.g. "The Giraffe Family," two or three people with different last names - list names, sort alphabetically by first name, e.g. "Sally Giraffe and Thomas Chan," more than three people with different last names - "Residents."

Please note, household information is put in the queue to be updated every morning at 4am UTC. 

Export filter by households

You can use a filter to export households. When you are ready to start filtering from the People section:

  1. Click on the Household view button.

2. Click the filter button and add the criteria. Before you filter, check the number of residents you want matched to your filter criteria.

3. When you're ready to export, click on the Actions dropdown menu in the top right-hand corner, and select Export.

You'll be redirected to People > Exports where you'll find your exported file. You will know when the export is complete once a link to the file is created in the "File" column and you see a timestamp of when the job completed in the "Finished" column. The "Finished" column will indicate the percentage and number of households processed out of the total count until completion. If this is a larger file, the job can take longer to complete.

View past household filter exports

You can view past household filter exports from People > More > Exports

The household exports are indicated within the "Type" column. The word "household" will also be included in the file name.

View households on a list

In the People section, click on Lists and a dropdown will appear of all existing lists. Click on a list and select Households.

At the top of the screen you'll see how many households are on your list. You also have the option of adding people to the list who live in the same household as a list member. The yellow button will give you the option to Add X in households to list, where "X" is the number of people who will be added. If you add them to the list, the yellow button will then grey out and you'll have the option to Remove X in households from list. This will only remove the people who were not originally on the list. If both buttons are greyed out, your list contains all members of households on the list.

The households in your list are displayed. Some, perhaps most, of the households on your list will have only one resident. Here is how a household with four residents appears on a list:

On the left side, you can see how the household name appears. On the right, you'll see a list of people who live at the address. You can click on a person's name to go to that person's profile. Within a profile, the Relationships section lists all the people who live in the same household and gives you the option of saving a new relationship between household members.

Split a list by households

You can Split a list by household to keep all household members together. 

Select the Households option in the Split section to keep households together. Then, decide whether to split the list in equal parts or by percentage. Percentages are written without percentage signs and are separated by a comma (e.g. 10, 40, 50).

Export a list by households

When exporting a list, you can choose to export people or households. A household export will contain one line per household and a person export contains one line per person. Previous exports will be displayed here - the house icon indicates a household export. "Household" will also appear in the file name of household exports.

📌 People without a mailable primary address will be excluded from a household export. This means that the number of people included in a household export may be less than the total number of people on the list. If a person's address is formatted incorrectly or is not complete, that person will not be included in a household export.

Related HOWTOs

Did this answer your question?