With Aplos, you have the ability to link contacts to assign them to a household. Once assigned, you can generate a contribution statement for your household, view all transactions or donations for a household, and generate smart lists by household.

How To Create A Household

You can create a household in just a few easy steps.

1. Navigate to People -> Households
   • Add a new household
   • View/edit/delete an existing household.
     
     
2. Click the green plus (+) icon in the top right corner.

Add Basic Household information

You can now add the household's basic name information. You will see three different name boxes to fill out in this section, each one has a different purpose that is explained below: 

1. • Name - This will be how you refer to households. For example, you might name the household “The Doe Family.” This name will appear on their household contribution statement.
   • Salutation - This will be how you’d like to address the household when emailing household statements. This can be edited to your preference. In the case of the Doe Family example, it may be Mr. & Mrs. Doe.
   • Sort Name - This will determine the order you want to view the household on the Household List. A good practice would be using their last name as the Sort Name. Using this method, your list will automatically be sorted by last name. 
     
     

Adding an Image

1. Click "Add an image" to add a picture of the family to further personalize each household
   
   
2. Click “Select Another” and choose to:
   
   • Upload a new image by clicking the "upload" button
   • Choose from filebox images that are displayed int eh "filebox images" section
     
     
     
3. Click "apply" to add image
   
   
   
4. Once added, click "apply" again to save the image to the household

Now that you’ve added an image to the household, you’ll notice it is displayed on the top left tile of the household details once the household has been saved.

If you ever need to remove the image, go to the editing of the household and follow these steps:

1. Click on “Edit this Image”
   
2. Click “No image is selected"
3. Click “Apply.”
   
   

Add Members

You can add members to your household from the Members section. This will allow you to add an existing contact from your Contact List. If the member you would like to add is not yet on your contact list, you will need to add them there first before proceeding. 

1. Search for their name in the “Add a Member” field
2. Select the desired contact
3. Click the green checkmark icon
   • If you’ve accidentally selected the wrong contact, click the red "x" icon

Add Member roles

After selecting the member, you can provide them with a Member Role. The Head of Household role is given to the primary contact. This role will set the household’s primary contact information. 

Setting a member as the head of household will be reflected in the Status column. You can always remove them as head of household from the Actions column.

You have the ability to choose different roles and how they are related to the head of household. You can also create new relationship types on the Contact Configuration page under the People tab.  

Household Actions

Within each household you will have the ability to accomplish actions including:

• Downloading contribution statements or pledge statements
• Emailing contribution statements or pledge statements
• editing or deleting the household.

To access the menu seen below, click “Actions” on the top left tile of the household.

Edit Household Details

You have the ability to set the primary household contact information or default to any contact information saved to the head of household. The default is to use the head of household contact information, but you can change that to use different contact information specific to the household. To enter contact information specific to the household, you will first need to uncheck the boxes that use the head of household’s information. Then enter the contact information for the household and click “Save & Close.”

Delete A Household

If you need to delete a household

1. Navigate to your Household List and locate the household you wish to delete
2. Select the red trash can icon on the right-hand side.
3. Confirm your deletion of the household.
   • This action will only delete the household. Your contacts will still be intact, along with their contact information and any activity associated with the contact.

Household Contribution Statements And Pledge Statements

You can choose to print or email statements from the Actions menu.

Printing

If you choose to print, this will provide a PDF of that household’s contributions or pledges, respectively. All contributions credited to members of the household will appear on the contribution statement. You will have options to customize the statements before you download them.

1. 1. click “Download Contribution Statement,” or “Download Pledge Statement.” 
   2. Summary: Select your display options (detailed or summary)
   3. Dates: Select desired date range of statement
   4. Categorization: Choose to display funds, accounts, or both
   5. Message: include a personalized message
   6. Logo: choose if you’d like to display your logo
   7. Click “Download,” and a PDF of the statement will be saved to your computer.
      
      

Emailing

If you choose to email statements, an email will be sent to each member of the household that has donated. All members will need to have an email address saved to their individual contact profile. This will allow the member to access their donor profile known as My Aplos for individual contribution statements. For more information about My Aplos, check out our My Aplos Guide.

1. Click  “Email Contribution Statement” or “Email Pledge Statement.”
2. From: select the sender’s email address. If you would like to set up a custom email domain to add a sender email check out this resource
3. Reply-to: select the email address you would like replies to the email sent to be routed to
4. Email subject: customize the email subject shown on the email when received
5. Email text: customize the content of the email the recipient will receive
   • Do not remove the “Link” option because this is the unique URL for that household to access their contributions from their Donor Profile.

How To View Household Activity

Within a household you will have different types of information about the household. Check out the tab descriptions for the household profile below.

• Activity - This contains all activity related to the household.
• Details - These details contain the primary contact information for the household.
• Notes - Keep detailed notes about the household, any note for a household will also display on the contact notes tab for all members of the households.
• Contributions - These are all the donations received from any member of the household.
• Reports of Contact - These contain any forms of communication related to the household.
• Transactions - These include transactions that are not related to contributions from any member of the household.

You’ll notice the bottom left tile shows donation history. You can click the “Donation History” link to view donations in detail.

Now that you’ve created households, you can generate a Donations by Household report.

How To Export Households

On your Household page, you have the ability to export a list of households, along with their contact information. To do this

1. Navigate to your Household List.
2. On the right-hand side, locate and click “Export Households.”

An Excel file of your households with the following fields will begin to download to your computer: 

How To Use Households In List Designer

List designer is a tool in Aplos that gives you the power to create customizable lists based on your criteria. Within List Designer you can use several household filters to assist with your list creation. Examples of different filters you can utilize include:

• In a Household
• Not in a Household  
• Household

For more information on how to use List Designer, check out our List Designer resource. 

How To Use Households In Letters

The Letters tool in Aplos helps you communicate with your contacts via physical letters. Within your Letter Builder, you can produce and mail letters to households in your contact lists. It includes a mail merge feature, which allows you to customize parts of the letter, such as the household’s salutation, while keeping the rest of the letter uniform.  

For more information on how to build letters, check out our resource on letters.