[SEllzey]

We just got AddressFinder, and I'm trying to prepare our data for its first trip through NCOA ever. Apparently any information in the address that isn't strictly part of a 2-line street address is going to get tossed, including business names. I'm really not sure what to do about that, since those records are either sole proprietors of small family businesses (a large group for us) and really are donating as individuals -- even if the donation is drawn from the business -- or they are people simply getting mail at their workplace (professors are a big group for us, for example). Either way, we have to keep the business name in the address.

We know the sole proprietors by name, not necessarily by business, and converting those records to organization records is going to be very confusing for our staff -- in other words, we know Sam Jones owns a chain of hot dog stands in Missouri, not that the owner of some chain we think is called Super Dogs is Sam Jones. I really hate the idea of redoing our whole way of relating to our donors for the sake of the USPS. Does anyone have any suggestions for how to get us through the NCOA requirements with business name intact? Is there a better way for us to organize our records in RE in general? We're an organization that has undergone exponential growth in the last few years, and catching up with what is "industry standard" has been, um, interesting. Thanks!

[Harriet]

Instead of having the business name as part of the address, I would use the Relationships tab and establish Organizational Relationhips with the person shown as Owner, Employee, etc. etc.

[SandyWilder]

Strongly ditto Harriet. Tracking that information as "address" info presents a world of issues. From a db intergrity standpoint, that info is clearly Relationship info. You can manipulate where the mail goes using address processing in mail (based on things like contact type, address attributes, etc.) to control where the mail goes. If most of their mail should go to the "business" address, then mark the address on the Org. relationship as the Preferred. This is done from the Address tab of the individual's record, which is different than mailing to them as Contacts (relatioships) to Orgs.

[SEllzey]

ahh....okay. I wasn't having any luck with the org relationship until I made the change in the address tab -- now I'm getting the mailing address I need. Thanks!

[SandyWilder]

That's what we're here for, dear Keep those cards and letters coming!

[L_A_Art]

I throw my vote, as well, behind the recommendation for using the "Business" button on Bio 1 (which creates an organization relationship with "Primary Business" checked). However, if going back and adding the organizations seems too much, I would export all of the addresses to Excel (make sure that you can then import the file back, so make sure to export all relevant import IDs-const import id and address import id). In Excel, I would sort by Address Line 1, which would give me all addresses that don't start with a number (which I would assume are business names). Then, I would add "c/o" to those business name address lines. Why? AddressFinder has special provisions for keeping any lines that contain a c/o. Once you add the c/o, you can just import the file with the changed addresses back into RE using the "update existing records" import.
One more thought: if you are proficient with import, you could probably use the same method to pull out all of the business names, and import them back in as organization relationships. This is an advanced use of RE, so I don't recommend it to everyone, but it is doable.