CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

I am looking for community feedback on a best practice issue.  We have a number of contacts who have some sort of small business in their home.  For example, Jenny Jones lives at 1234 Oak Lane, and is the proprietor of Jenny Jones Photography at the same address.  At the moment we have Jenny Jones as an individual and the business as an organization, both with the same address, and perhaps the same phone number and email.  That seems inefficient at least.  In order to not send duplicate newsletters by snail mail, we have to maintain a group which excludes the business organization.  Keeping both contacts and the group assignment up to date as things change tends to be error-prone.

If we collapse the two into one contact, we will lose the ability to select the business as an organization.  It also does not seem to make sense to add the business as a second "location" within the individual contact since there is really only one location.  We could establish a relationship like "Owner of ..." or something to keep track of them, but haven't taken that step yet.

Any thoughts?

Using organization address for individuals isn't on the 2.1 queue but has been discussed - so a code contribution in that area might push it forward.

... I'd love to have the option when importing to populate both the organisation and the individual and duplicating the address/phone/emails !

I might be misunderstanding, but your can import information (including address info) for a "related contact" (e.g. an employer/organization for example) when importing Individuals. (This feature has been available for several releases - when mapping your import file - scroll down the select options to - related contact info - ...)