Sometimes two records in CoolFocus are connected in real life — a parent and an adult child in separate households, estranged spouses who no longer live together, a business and its owner, or a church and one of its members. Relationships let you link those records so anyone reviewing one can see the connection to the other.
Relationships are also how you handle a person who is connected to more than one household. A person only ever belongs to one household (see Households), so a second home, a separate-but-related family, or a shared-custody child is recorded as a relationship — not a second household.
Every contact-style record has a Relationships tab: contacts, donors, clients (Love INC and pregnancy center), volunteers, households, organizations, churches, and gap ministries all have one.
When you first open the tab it says "No relationships found." That's expected — relationships aren't created automatically. You add the ones that matter to your work.
Every relationship has a type, and the type is what makes it read correctly from both sides. A type has two ends — a Parent side and a Child side — and a phrase for each direction:
Parent to Child — how it reads on the parent's record, looking toward the child.
Child to Parent — how it reads on the child's record, looking back at the parent.
Each side is also limited to a kind of record (Parent Type / Child Type): Contact, Organization, Household, Church, Gap Ministry, or All.
For example, the built-in Church Attendee type is set up like this:
Parent Type: All
Child Type: Contacts
Parent to Child: "Attendee is"
Child to Parent: "Attendee of"
That reads as "First Baptist — Attendee is — John Smith" on the church's record, and "John Smith — Attendee of — First Baptist" on John's record. The Manage Relationship Types screen shows a live Examples preview so you can see exactly how the wording will read before you save.
CoolFocus does not ship a built-in list of family types. Out of the box the only types are Primary Contact and Church Attendee — your organization creates the rest. So before you can link, say, a parent and a child, someone first has to create a Parent / Child type.
Common types teams set up:
Spouse / Spouse — reads "Spouse of" both directions.
Parent / Child — "Parent of" one way, "Child of" the other.
Sibling / Sibling — "Sibling of" both directions.
Caregiver / Care Recipient — "Caregiver of" / "Cared for by".
Grandparent / Grandchild, Guardian / Dependent, Employer / Employee, and so on.
An administrator adds or edits types from the Manage Relationship Types button next to the type dropdown on the create form. Each type has a Name, an Active toggle, Parent Type / Child Type, and the Parent to Child / Child to Parent wording. If you're not an admin and the type you need is missing, ask one on your team to add it.
Open the record you want to link from — a person, household, organization, and so on.
Go to its Relationships tab.
Click Create in the top-right corner. Since creating a relationship is the only option on this tab, CoolFocus opens the Create Relationship form directly, without an extra menu step. (You can also press ⌘K / Ctrl-K and search for "Create Relationship.")
Pick the Relationship Type. Each type appears once for each direction, so choose the wording that matches the record you started from — opened from the mother you'd pick "Parent of"; opened from the child you'd pick "Child of".
In the Related field, search for and select the other record. The field's label changes to match the type — Contact, Organization, Household, Church, or Gap Ministry.
Save.
The relationship then appears on both records automatically, each showing the correct wording for its side — you never enter it twice.
For a client whose mother is a separate client, or spouses who have split into two households, the most reliable way to connect them is to link the people. Open one person, go to the Relationships tab, and add a Parent / Child or Spouse relationship to the person in the other household. Because each person belongs to a household, staff reviewing either household can follow the relationship to the connected family. See Households for the full pattern, including shared-custody children.
If your team specifically wants household-to-household links, an administrator can create a relationship type whose sides are set to Household. We still recommend linking people for family connections, because it records who is actually related.
Relationships can't be edited in place. To change one, open it, delete it, and create a new one with the correct type or record. To remove a relationship, use the delete (trash) action on the relationship card. Deleting from either record removes it from both.
Merging Duplicate Records — if two records are the same person, merge them instead of relating them.
