I am not taking about group trips, but groups within ClientBase.  Last week an agent sent me an email asking why a client she knew was part of a particular group was not showing up in a report.

The secret is to remember that GROUPS in ClientBase are available in PROFILES, RES CARDS and INVENTORY (and more, but those are the biggies). And they are mutually exclusive.

The easiest way to remember is to think specifically for that particular task.

• If you are working a group trip and you want to make sure all of the RES CARDS are together, you want to create a group for the RES CARD.
• If you are working with a group from Church, you want to make sure all the PROFILES are together in that group.
• If you want to know all of your suppliers who sell River Cruises, create a PROFILE group for that group of vendors.

Remember, the same group can also apply for profiles, res cards,  and inventory. For instance, if you have a Church group that is looking to go on a cruise in December.  Create a group and call it “Church Cruise” and assign it to profiles, res cards, and inventory.

To create a group,  GLOBAL DEFAULTS–>GROUP LISTS–> ADD

Then name the group and select the areas you want to use to track. (Testing, Client, Invoice, Payment,Res Card, and Inventory)

Click OK and the group will appear in the drop down list of the appropriate areas.

Why groups? Right now I am working on a dozen families that are going to be at Beaches the same week. It is a group (but not technically per the vendor). I have all of the clients, res cards, and invoices tagged. That way when I want to see a list of people going, I can query the profile manager by the group.  If I want to see the individual reservations, I can query the res cards by that group.

I STRONGLY suggest creating your groups this way and NOT typing them in the field manually. It is too easy to make a typo and any typo will throw off the computer. You can create a group on the fly as well. Just click the blue underline and go from there.

And here is a tip.  When the group is no longer “active” you can delete the group from the list (it will not show in the drop down) but it will leave the group in the proper records. Caution: you need to know the exact name of the group down the road. Another alternative is to re-name the groups that are inactive beginning with “zz” that way they show up at the bottom of the drop down list.

Tags: Groups