Manage Families

When To Use This#

Use this article when staff need the Families page to find households, review contacts, dogs, billing and document follow-up, portal access, and editable family details.

Before You Start#

• Sign in to the business app and confirm you are in the correct business account.
• Confirm the staff member is allowed to update family details or contacts before saving changes.
• Use the family workspace for household context; use the linked billing, document, message, or access pages for deeper follow-up.
• Follow approved business policy before changing family lifecycle status, archiving contacts, enabling portal access, or using billing and document follow-up details.

Families Page Overview#

The Families page is the business directory for household records. It helps staff find a family, review household context, and move to dog, document, billing, message, or access workflows when another page owns the next action.

Use the summary cards when you need a focused list, such as billing follow-up or documents and onboarding follow-up. Treat those cards as work queues, not as policy decisions.

Search And Family Rows#

Search by family display name, guardian name, relationship, email, phone, dog name, or dog breed when a family is not visible.

Select a family row to open the side sheet. Review the family status, guardian count, dog count, pending documents, primary contact, address, dog links, billing snapshot, portal users, authorized pickups, and emergency contacts.

Family Side Sheet#

Use the side sheet to understand household context before changing a family or contact record. Open linked actions when needed: family documents, email, billing, portal access, messages, dog details, or dog documents.

Billing, document, onboarding, and message chips are follow-up signals. They do not replace the detailed pages that own those workflows.

Contacts And Portal Access#

Guardian, authorized pickup, and emergency contact details help staff understand who belongs to the household. Guardian contacts may also show portal sign-in access and communication preferences.

If invite, reset, or portal-access details are unclear, use the access workflow instead of guessing. Manage Access and Invites explains where an owner or admin can review access.

Edit Family Details#

Staff with the right access may update family display name, lifecycle status, internal notes, guardian details, authorized pickups, and emergency contacts.

Save the change and confirm the success notice. The Families page should keep the family, search, or focus context when possible.

When Family Controls Are Missing#

• If the family list is empty, confirm the business has active families and clear any search or focus filter.
• If search has no results, try family name, guardian name, dog name, dog breed, email, or phone.
• If the billing or document follow-up filter does not show the family you expected, open the family directly and review the side sheet before assuming the follow-up is missing.
• If edit actions are missing or a save returns an access error, ask an owner or admin to review family-record access on the Access page. See Manage Access and Invites.
• If a save fails, check required fields such as contact group, first name, last name, and family record, then retry.
• If no primary contact is shown, review the guardian contacts and set the correct primary guardian only if business policy allows it.
• If portal access state is unclear, review the guardian contact's portal sign-in setting and then use the access workflow for invite or reset questions.
• If archive, deletion, retention, or lifecycle policy is unclear, follow approved business policy instead of guessing.