How Do I Use Relationships to Add New Individuals & Copy Contact Info?

If you receive a contribution from a couple and both people are in a single entity record, this will create warnings and errors if you need to file this contribution on a compliance report. You can use the Relationships section to split them into two records by adding a new individual and copying over the contact information at the same time.

First, from within the record, click the Add icon in the top right corner of the Relationships section as if you are going to add a new Relationship. In the window that appears, type in the name of one of the two individuals involved in the Affiliated field. For example, if the record was for Mary and Bill Jones, you could type in Mary Jones. The system will search for this entity and if not found will provide an option to add a new individual.

When you click Add New Individual, more options will appear that will allow you to determine what data you want added to the new record you’re creating.

If the existing record contains contact information, such as Address or Phone, you’ll be able to click each tab and select a check box for which piece of data to add to the new record. When ready, click Add Relationship. This will not only create a new record for the new individual but link them in the Relationships section.

At this point, the final step is to edit the name of the record to contain only one of the individuals. In the example above, since Mary Jones was created as a separate record, you would update the name to be Bill Jones instead of Mary and Bill Jones.