Families

The Families module gives your church a household-level view of people data. Instead of working only with individual records, this page helps teams organize members into family groups, assign a head of family, and review who belongs together.

This becomes especially useful for pastoral care, household communication, child ministry context, and cleaner people reporting.

Overview

The Families page is designed around three main responsibilities:

• Create and maintain family records.
• Connect those records to real member records.
• Review household structure from one place.

The page is branch-aware and loads family data only for the active branch.

What You Can Do in Families

• Create a new family record.
• Choose an optional head of family from eligible members.
• Set the family status.
• Save family notes.
• Search for families by family name or head-of-family information.
• View household member counts and listed members.
• Import or export family datasets.
• Edit or delete family records when permitted.
• Select many families and delete them in bulk.

Page Layout

At the top of the page, Holy Resource shows summary cards for:

• Total Families
• Active Families
• Inactive Families

Below that, the table area gives your team the daily controls it needs:

• Columns for table visibility preferences.
• Filter for status-based narrowing.
• Families import and export tools.
• Add Family to create a household.
• Search families... for quick lookup.

Family Table Behavior

The family table is designed to be readable at a glance.

Common information shown in the grid includes:

• Family ID
• Family Name
• Head of Family
• Member count
• Listed member names
• Status
• Row actions

For each family, Holy Resource can display both the numeric member count and a short visible list of the people currently connected to that household.

That means the table is useful not only for record storage, but also for quickly checking whether a family grouping actually looks correct.

Search and Filters

Search supports practical family lookup across:

• Family name
• Head of family name
• Head of family identifier values returned with the record

The current filter menu supports status filtering.

Use Clear all filters to reset the view back to the full branch list.

Add a New Family

The Add Family dialog is intentionally simple.

Required fields

The create and edit flow requires:

• Family Name
• Status

Optional fields

These can be omitted:

• Head of Family
• Notes

How Head of Family Selection Works

The head-of-family picker is intentionally conservative.

In the add flow, Holy Resource only offers members who do not currently belong to another family. In the edit flow, it also keeps the current head available so you can preserve or change that choice safely.

This helps reduce accidental overlap across household records.

Edit Family

The edit dialog mirrors the create flow so staff do not need to learn two different patterns.

Common edit tasks include:

• Renaming a family.
• Reassigning or removing the head of family.
• Switching the status.
• Updating internal notes.

After saving, the family list refreshes so the updated household is visible immediately.

View Family Details

The View Details dialog provides a clearer household summary without forcing the team into edit mode.

The detail view can include:

• Family name and family ID
• Head of family
• Status badge
• Household phone and email when present in the record
• Family member count
• Member list
• Notes

This view is useful when staff need to confirm the household structure quickly during pastoral review or admin cleanup.

Family Membership Model

One important point about the Families module is that family records and member records work together.

In practice, the flow should be understood like this:

1. Create the family record in Families.
2. Assign the household name to the appropriate member records in Members.
3. Return to Families to review the resulting member count and visible family list.

This means the Families page acts as the household record, while the Members page helps complete the full household picture.

Import and Export

Families includes built-in import and export tools.

For the full shared table workflow, including Smart Import, security checks, previews, JSON import reports, and export format differences, see Import and Export.

Export behavior

Exports use the filtered family list and typically include:

• ID
• Family Name
• Head of Family
• Member Count
• Status

Import behavior

Family imports can map fields such as:

• Family Name
• Head of Family
• Status
• Notes

The required column for family import is:

• Family Name

Rows without a family name are skipped.

Bulk Actions and Deletion

Like other management pages, Families supports row selection and bulk deletion for users with delete permission.

Use bulk delete carefully. It is best reserved for clear cleanup work such as duplicate imports, test data, or records created by mistake.

Permissions and Access

The page is permission-gated by the families resource.

• Read access is required to open the page.
• Write access is required to add or edit family records.
• Delete access is required to remove one or many families.

Restricted actions are hidden or blocked when the current user does not have the needed permission.

Recommended Household Workflow

1. Create the household record.
2. Assign the head of family if one person should represent the household.
3. Move to the Members page and attach members to that family name.
4. Return to Families to confirm the member count and visible list.
5. Mark inactive families when the household should no longer appear in active operations.

Good Data Habits

• Keep family names consistent so member assignment stays predictable.
• Choose a head of family only when that role is genuinely useful for your team.
• Use notes for operational context, not sensitive details.
• Review households with zero visible members so unused family records do not accumulate.