Family is perfect (pretty much) for mailings as myself and my dad would want a letter to each of us but if the advisor wanted to think about million dollar clients but neither myself nor my sister would make the cut alone but when thought of as a family group we would be considered.

In Redtail a Family is based on who is on your tax return. As an adult child of an A client I am not in that family but should be thought of when the advisor thinks of the O'Connor Family Group. The Family Group is all of the individual families (or companies, trusts, estates) that should be treated the same so when the eldest clients die we will have treated the youngest well enough that they keep the accounts here. Then you could also run reports with family groups by AUM which would show each of the the contacts and their accounts that is under each family group. I would make this field function like the account company list where it suggests a name if there is already one there or i can add a new one and old ones don't go away until I have deleted it from each contact. Then instead of showing the advisor 140 families he would see 100 family groups and 100 relationships to maintain.

In regards to deceased clients, I do have one suggestion that I think would be very helpful.

I’ve read over the instructions of ‘database recommendations for deceased contacts’ and my one issue is that we are instructed to remove the deceased from the family all together.

- I think it would be great to keep the deceased in the family but to change the head of household to the surviving spouse. Then to change the ‘Relationship’ of the deceased ‘Deceased Spouse.’ In other words, add a Relationship category that is 'Deceased Spouse' (this way they would not be included in mail-merges but they would should under the family household.

I also agree that we should be able to have a child- son/ daughter noted as an adult and not only as a dependent.

Note: my issue with the membership option, is that when going into a surviving contact’s profile, you don’t see memberships displayed anywhere, it’s as if the deceased never existed or is not at all connected to the surviving contact.

I set up the family tree in "Important Information" trying to link everyone in memberships was too hard. Also trying to find all the family members when the kids got married became problematic. This also saved time in not having to set up each child as a contact.

It would be nice to see all connections/relationships listed under the membership section. For example, if you add a spouse and children under the household, they would show up under membership along with any adult children you add. Also, if you add someone under the Professional Contact section, it would show up under memberships as well. That would give you one place to see all relationships...instead of the multiple places you have to look currently.

Would be nice if this also worked for the employment fields. If you add a business under employment, it would also show up under membership. It would be nice if the Employer field (which currently shows under membership) would also show under Employment.

Please add all family members info (d.o.b, employer, phone, email, etc)_ to main client dashboard. Think of it as a "household" dashboard.

We need to be able under a clients name to see dependent children and non dependent children & that way you can see the whole family connection instead of listing them as memberships.

Also, under the current "Family Tree" there is a button that says "Add Dependent". This can be misleading as a user might think they can just type in a name and add it when really they are LINKING an existing contact record as a dependent. While I do think the "Family Tree" feature needs to be revamped completely (i.e. - instead of adding "dependents", we should be able to link various "family members"), in the meantime the verbiage should be changed to "LINK Dependent".

We need a feature where we can show an extended family tree (at the very least grandparents, parents, and children). Currently, we can only add children to a family as dependents of parents. We have many situations where both the parents and their adult children are clients, therefore they have to have completely separate "families". We'd like to link their contact records to show the relationship between the individuals so that a new person coming in would see how extensive some of our client relationships are and know who is connected to whom.

If I add a person in my data base and I want to add them to a family tree, you type the first couple letters or the name in "Search" and it NEVER finds the clients. It always bring up people people who aren't even close. It also has an issue in adding the address to that person you want to link. It changes the address to the Head of Household address. They dont live in the same address so what the point in having a family tree if you cant put in the correct address for that person.

We would love to pull a family tree report that would go into the memberships for parents, children, grandchildren, etc. that would be an eye-candy type page

Add the Membership section back on the main contact page as it was before. This allows me to see all the referrals this person sent on the first page. This is extremely important to know, especially when a client calls in from "out of the blue." also, when adding the "referred by" section of the contact, it should be a link instead of just text.

Yes, please address this issue - memberships and family tree is too confusing - we should be able to view all family members on one page regardless of whether or not they are children, adult, or clients.

Yes please address this. Many of our clients have children that our now our clients and this is practically impossible to see the whole family under the same section. Memberships do not populate under the client profile form which is crazy. You have a form that is great and verifies the OUR info is correct to the client but can not verify the most important piece which is most likely their beneficiaries for their nest egg. Please Please address this and have one or the other. Membership or family household. Can not have both as the do not mesh well with each other. THANK YOU

This would be wonderful! And maybe you could color code it so that while children are living with their parents (dependents) they are all the same color but when they branch off, they become their own color.

That would be very helpful!

Memberships is awful for family connections.
I love the family tree that you have started under "head of household." The problem is, the kids grow up, get married & have kids of their own & you have to actually disconnect the family tree or all the addresses & phone numbers mess up. The family tree should allow for grown, out of house children, grandkids, extended family, etc. This would greatly facilitate client interactions on the phone. "Mr. Jones! How are your grandchildren, Mary & Jo?"

There are many scenarios in which the son or daughter of a household that they are in with their parents, are actually a head of another household. There are actually many cases in which the wife/mother is the head of the household instead of the father too because they have investment accounts in which the father/husband does not. I don't know if you have ever had this suggestion before, but I think that it would make sense to have family trees developed. That way you can group households together. Essentially each big branch is a household of the family tree. I have been looking all over and I don't see the ability for children to be the head of another household. I think it would also be kind of cool to have a family tree graphic on the interface and you can click on the different households and move around the tree. Plus you could also have the ability to move accounts from one person to the other for various reasons - divorce, death, disability, and any other life occurrences.

It would be really helpful to have the ability to see Family Activities in one screen just like you are able to view Family Accounts. Shouldn't have to click between spouses to see activities.

Seems so logical and simple.