---
title: "Household/Organisation Identifiers"
slug: "householdorganisation-identifiers"
description: "How to use a House ID column when importing data into infoodle to group people into households or organisations: one column, unique per household, no blanks."
updated: 2026-10-17T04:35:31Z
published: 2026-10-17T04:35:31Z
canonical: "help.infoodle.com/householdorganisation-identifiers"
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://help.infoodle.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Household/Organisation Identifiers

## Household or Organisation ID

Unlike the Contact ID options, identifying Organisations/Households during an import can only use a single column of data. This data can be used during Import to Group Family Members into Households or Staff into Organisations.

              
              

See **[Adding a Household/Organisation](/v1/docs/adding-a-householdorganisation)** for more information on how infoodle handles Organisations and Households.

During an import you can select any single column to be used as a House ID. Ideally, this would be a dedicated **House ID** column which assigns a different number per household. However, you can also use any existing data that is unique per Household, such as an **Organisation or Household Name** or the **Street Address** column, if this is different for every Household in the Data.

### House ID Requirements

There are a few Key things to be aware of in order for the House ID to correctly Group the Contacts during the import.

**House ID Data must:**

1. Uniquely Identify Each separate Organisation/Household grouping
2. Be present for Every Record in the data (Otherwise all blanks are grouped)
3. Be identical for each Row/Contact within a Household or Organisation

Also Note, that if you will be creating **Organisation Contact Records** during import, you can only have One Organisation Contact record per House ID, but can include as many Person contact records as required.

Looking at the Below Example, there are 6 different Organisations/Households. A **House ID** column is added, which identifies each household with a separate number. Alternatively, the **Household Name** column could be used instead as this is also unique. ![House ID.png](https://cdn.document360.io/d198920d-a212-4177-85f9-e1abc92e7ab3/Images/Documentation/House%20ID.png)

              **Please Note**

              

**If your data file includes some contacts already in infoodle:** The Import Tool can only create new households, or add people to existing ones. Currently, you cannot move an existing Contact to a new household via import, this must be done within the database. See **[Moving to Another Household/Organisation](/v1/docs/move-to-another-household-or-organisation)**

**If you are using the Import to add/update existing Households:** We recommend using infoodle's own **House ID** field in the Data File. This is set for each contact in the database to identify their Household. It can be accessed by running an infoodle Report and including the **House ID** field.