Linking a Member to a Family

Why this is admin-only

Family relationships (who's a spouse, a child, a dependent) are considered internal record-keeping rather than something a self-registrant should set up themselves, which is why the Family section only appears on the Manual Registration form, never on the public Self-Registration form.

Linking a member

From the Manual Add/Edit Member form's Family section, either create a new family unit or add the member into an existing one, this works the same whether the member was originally added manually, through Bulk Registration, or via Self-Registration, linking is always a separate follow-up step for the latter two.

If you're processing a Bulk Registration import for a group where you know families are involved (a whole household submitted together, for example), plan for a short follow-up pass afterward to link families, it's not part of the import itself.

Best practice

Link families as part of your regular new-member follow-up process, not as an afterthought. A member's family connections feed into how your church understands household relationships, and they're much easier to set correctly the first time than to reconstruct later from memory.