Master Records

A few of our clients raised an interesting point after reading the previous issue of this newsletter. They asked how to create more than three User Defined Milestones for a household. It's a great question and really just one example in a common theme. It's true that there are only three slots in a contact record for entering User Defined Milestones. It's equally true that there are only five slots for entering the names and birth dates of children. And there are only four slots for phone numbers. So how do you deal with situations where you have more information than you have places to put it?

The Concept

The answer is that you apply the concept of Master contact records vs non-Master records. This is already built into Investment Gold but perhaps you've never used it. The idea is quite simple. You mark the main contact record for a household as their Master record by entering "Yes" into the Master Record field in the top half of their contact record. Then you're free to create a second contact record for the household. Enter "No" into that second contact record's Master Record field. Now you have three more User Defined Milestone slots for the household. And five more rows for entering children's names and birth dates, etc.

The important thing to keep in mind is that the Master record is the go-to record for that household. You would only ever visit the other (non-Master) record if you want to enter overflow information for the household (i.e. information that doesn't fit in the Master record such as a fourth User Defined Milestone, a sixth child, etc.). And in particular, you always want Pending and History items to be in the Master record when possible. It's important that you centralize all of the information about that household in a single place where you can look it up quickly. And that single place is their Master contact record. But the Nurturing Engine is going to schedule reminders linked to the non-Master record related to for example birthdays of children listed in the non-Master record. Ditto for User Defined Milestones listed in the non-Master record. So make sure to re-link those reminders to the Master record when you complete them (but not before or the Nurturing Engine will simply change them back). And if you forget to re-link them to the Master record when you complete them, you can do so after the fact.

Please note that non-Master records are mostly empty. All of the important information is in the Master record. The non-Master records are only there to handle the overflow. So for example you wouldn't enter an address into a non-Master record.

Also please note that in theory you could create more than one non-Master record for a household. But in a practical sense the need for that rarely arises.

Execution - The Basics

Now that you understand the concept, let's get into the details. It's extremely important that your team can tell at a glance if they're looking at a Master record or a non-Master record. Because if they can't, they might accidentally schedule an activity to the non-Master record. Which means that when they eventually complete that activity, it ends up in the non-Master record's History folder. Generally speaking, we usually don't want a household's History spread across two contact records (there are a few potential exceptions, such as a separated couple).

So how can you visually identify a non-Master record? Well, it won't contain an address, that is a fairly visible indicator. And it will have a "No" in the Master Record field. And it will have "Non-Master" in the Contact Type field. Please note that we don't want the non-Master record to have a Contact Type indicating that the household is a client. This would throw off the totals when using a filter or Dashboard to count your clients.

But what about the Contact Search Center tab? If you search for last name "Sanders", there may be two entries for the Ralph and Sally Sanders family in the list, one for their Master record and the other for their non-Master record. Unless your Contact Search Center's display includes the Master Record column, you might not be able to tell which is the Master record. So how do we make this clear at a glance? In the non-Master record, simply add an asterisk (*) to the end of the Contact, Last Name and Dear field entries (and Company if you're also using the Master record concept for companies). At least one of the Contact, Last Name and Dear fields is guaranteed to be included in the Contact Search Center's list, so you can immediately tell which of the two records is the Master record for the Sanders household.

Now all that remains is to build a relationship diagram (in the Relationships tab of the Contact record) linking the Master and non-Master records for the household. At this point you've done all of the basics necessary to successfully use Master and non-Master contact records.

Execution - Getting Fancy

So just to recap, your team can distinguish between Master records and non-Master records because:

• non-Master records are missing highly visible information such as the address

• non-Master records have an asterisk (*) at the end of the Contact, Last Name and Dear field entries (and optionally the Company field entry as well)

• non-Master records have "Non-Master" in the Contact Type field

• non-Master records have "No" in the Master Record field

• Master and non-Master records are linked in a relationship diagram

If you're still worried that all of this can possibly be overlooked in a hectic moment, let's make non-Master records even easier to recognize.

To make that "No" in the Master Record field more prominent, we could change its colour to red. And what if we also leave the Master Record field empty for Master records instead of entering "Yes". This will make the red "No" particularly prominent and also deals with the fact that you probably haven't been entering anything into the Master Record field up until now anyway.

And we can also make a copy of the Personal Notes field (in the Personal Information screen), position that copy in the top half of the contact record where it is more prominent, make its contents red as well and have you enter "*** non-MASTER record ***" into that field for non-Master records.

Is that prominent enough?

And that's all there is to it! As always, we are here if you need assistance.

To watch an 6 minute video on creating a non-Master record, please click here.

To watch a 3 minute video demonstrating how to add a copy of the Personal Notes field to the top of a contact record, click here.

And to watch a 2 minute video showing how to make a field's contents red, click here.