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Author Topic: Individual vs Household vs Organization  (Read 917 times)

carl.miller

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Individual vs Household vs Organization
November 28, 2013, 10:18:44 am
I am setting up CiviCRM for the first time for our NPO.  During the trail and error period, I am using Bitnami to host it locally on my PC via Wordpress.  I will move it to a server when I have the hang of the system.  For now I have imported some customers and donations.

I have two questions.  The first one is, Is it a problem to create all contacts as Individuals?  The reason I ask is if they are labeled in different ways, then imports have to be divided up by these groupings too.  It would make imports much easier if all contacts were individuals and I created a group called Organization.  I plan to enter most of our future data via import.  However, what are the advantages to entering contacts as Ind/House/Org?  Or what are the disadvantages of labeling them all Ind?

Second, I have printed receipts to see what they look like.  Since I am just set up on a localhost I cannot email out to test that part.  I have just selected the PDF version for sending a receipt.  I attached a screenshot to this question of what I get.  It does not even have the donor's name or anything.  I know I need to edit the message template but I figured that would just be adding our address and logo.  I have gone to Administer>Communication>Message templates>System Workflow Messages>Contributions - Receipt (off-line).  I added a table with our Logo and address.  It does not show up on here.  I am wondering if I am editing the right form for the receipt I am trying to print.  Also how can I use the WYSIWYG to edit the Contributions - Receipt (off-line) or can I only edit it via html?


Erik Hommel

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Re: Individual vs Household vs Organization
November 28, 2013, 11:56:56 pm
Good to hear you are getting some CiviCRM mileage :-)

Quote
The first one is, Is it a problem to create all contacts as Individuals?
No, that is not a problem at all. However, if you are creating a group called Organization you will be missing out on some of the functionality. For example, all your relationships would have to go from individual to individual, it would expect a first and a last name for an organization etc. Also, if you are planning to use contact subtypes at some point in the future it will be messier if you have everything as an Individual.  It is not so much a problem as that I think the price you are paying will be higher than the advantage of a simple import. I suggest you try a little more to understand if this is the case for you, or that making the import simpler really is your top advantage. Please realize that the wrong decision now will mean you seriously disadvantage yourself for as long as you are using CiviCRM, or would face a complete re-install at some point in the future. My recommendation would be to make the split, or at least try to use CiviCRM to a point where you have a good understanding of organizations and individuals. Finally, I do know of some CiviCRM customers that do not use households (which makes sense) but I do not know any that put organizations in as individuals....


Quote
Second, I have printed receipts to see what they look like
You can set the outbound mail to "Redirect to Database". That will not send email, but list them as Archived Mailings so you can see what is being sent out. You can edit the message template or add your own templates. You can also use tokens to get data in your templates. Did you have a study of http://book.civicrm.org/user/current/common-workflows/tokens-and-mail-merge/ or https://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Message+Templates?
Consultant/project manager at EEatWork and CiviCooP (http://www.civicoop.org/)
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