There are two halves to this system and they meet at the person. One half is who people are — their household, their chapter, the qualifications they hold. The other is money — what came in, where it was directed, and what the person got in return. Keep those two halves straight and everything else follows.
Every Account is either a Household or a Business, and the difference is not cosmetic — it changes where the money and the membership actually sit. For a household they run through the person. For an organization they belong to the company, and often no individual is named on them at all.
One thing does not move: certifications are always personal. A company cannot hold Wilderness First Aid. Its staff can.
Household account — it runs through the person
Business account — it belongs to the company
On a business account the Engagement and the Membership hang off the company itself. Most of them name no individual at all — which is correct, not missing data.
| Where does it live? | Household | Business |
|---|---|---|
| The money (Engagement) | With a named contact | The company — often nobody named |
| Membership | Has a primary member | The company, type Organization |
| Chapter | Affiliation on the person | On the company's membership |
| Certifications | The person | Still the person, never the company |
A household or an organization — families, companies, foundations. When money comes from an organization rather than a person, this is what it is credited to.
A person: a member, a donor, an outing leader, a chapter officer. Everything else points back here, which makes the contact record the right starting point for almost any question about somebody.
Where the money goes. Gifts, dues, pledges, sponsorships and in-kind, separated by record type. If you want to know what somebody paid or gave — for any reason — this is the object.
Where an Engagement's money was directed — a fund, a program, or several split by amount or percentage. One gift can be spread across more than one purpose, which is why fund totals come from designations rather than from Engagement amounts.
A benefit, not a payment. One term of membership — its type, its dates, its status, its chapter. It exists because money came in, and the Engagement that paid for it links to it. The Membership tells you what somebody is entitled to; the Engagement tells you what they paid.
A local chapter. People connect through a Chapter Affiliation record, so one person can be attached to several with one marked primary. Officers work the same way, with their own record, position and dates.
What somebody is qualified to do — Wilderness First Aid, Leave No Trace, Outdoor Leadership, CPR. Nothing to do with money. These decide who can lead what, and several of them expire.
| You want… | That is a… |
|---|---|
| Someone's phone number or address | Contact |
| Whether they are a member right now | Membership — Is Current, then Status |
| What they paid for that membership | Engagement — Membership record type |
| A gift somebody made last year | Engagement — Donation record type |
| How much a fund raised | Designations, not Engagement amounts |
| Whether they can lead an outing | Certification — Status and Expiration Date |
| Everyone in a chapter | Chapter → Chapter Affiliations |
| A company's giving history | Account → Engagements |
| Checks waiting to be entered | Gift Batch |
This is the distinction worth internalizing. The Engagement is the transaction. The Membership is what that transaction entitled somebody to. They are separate records on purpose — a membership can be adjusted, extended or canceled without rewriting the financial history, and the money stays auditable regardless of what happens to the benefit.
Because membership payments and charitable gifts are both Engagements, an unfiltered total mixes subscription income with philanthropy. Filtering by record type is the single most important habit in this system. Any Engagement number quoted without one is not a real number.
Every renewal creates another Membership record rather than updating the old one, which preserves the history but means the object is overwhelmingly historical. Finding somebody's current membership means checking Is Current or the status — not opening whichever record appears first.
Records carry identifiers from what came before — iMIS keys, Razor's Edge IDs, legacy product and item references. They exist so historical data can be traced and reconciled. You do not need to fill them in and should not edit them.