Skip to content
PositiveForm

Add an existing person to a household

Attach an existing unassigned person to a household. The selected person appears once in the household with the intended household role.

Status
Draft, not yet re-verified
Who can do this
Organization owners, Managers, Staff
Required access
members.change
Where in PositiveForm
/households/:householdId/overview
Open in ChatGPT Open in Claude View Markdown

"Copy for AI" puts the full Markdown of this page on your clipboard. Paste it into ChatGPT, Claude, or any assistant and ask it to walk you through the steps.

Who this is for

This guide is for desk staff, managers, and owners putting somebody who already has a record into a household: a sibling who started separately, a parent added later, or a member whose family you are only now setting up.

The point of doing it this way is that it moves the existing person rather than making a second copy of them. Their attendance, ranks, and history come with them.

You need the members.change permission.

Before you begin

  • Search for the person first, so you know they already exist. If they do not, create them new instead; see Create a member.
  • Know that PositiveForm only offers people who are not already in a household. Somebody already placed will not appear in the search, which is what stops you putting one person in two families.

Steps

  1. Click Households in the left navigation and open the household. It opens on Overview, with People cards for everybody already in the family.
  2. Click Add person in the header.
  3. Choose Add existing member, which moves someone who already has a record into this household. The other choice, New member, creates a person from scratch and adds them here.
  4. Type at least two characters into Search by name or email. Until then PositiveForm says Start typing to search., and while it looks it says Searching…
  5. Find the person in the results and click Add beside them.

Expected outcome

PositiveForm confirms with Added to household, and the person's card appears once among People on Overview, with their role and, if anything is outstanding for them, a required-item count.

They are moved, not copied. Their member record, attendance, ranks, and history are unchanged and now sit inside this family, which is what makes shared billing and sibling handling work.

The household's member and adult counts update to match. Continue in Manage household people and safety context to set their relationships and emergency contacts, or in Maintain member profile and notes to finish their own profile.

Recovery

If the search says No unassigned members found., the person is already in a household. That is the safeguard working. Open their member record to see which household they are in, and move them from there rather than adding a duplicate here.

If nothing happens as you type, you have entered fewer than two characters.

If adding fails, PositiveForm shows Couldn't add that person. with the reason, and nothing changes.

If you added the wrong person, remove them from this household; see Manage household people and safety context. Removing them from a household does not delete them.

If you cannot find somebody who genuinely has no household, check the location picker: you may be looking at a different location's people.