Learn how PantrySoft gathers and assembles the age or date-of-birth for all the members in a household
Intro
When you first create household members in PantrySoft (either in the Dashboard via New Client and New Household Member screens, or else in the Kiosk and Online Portal via the New Client or Edit Client "Registration" screens), by default PantrySoft assigns the primary household member and any additional household members a Date of Birth. If desired, admins can configure PantrySoft to create a placeholder date of birth instead of the real one by changing Date of Birth fields to Age fields.
Age for Date of Birth
For those pantries that don't wish to gather an exact date of birth for their members, PantrySoft can instead gather age (with the following setting):
Setup->Household Member Settings: Use Age Instead of Date Of Birth.
Behind the scenes, PantrySoft will take the age value for each member and produce a placeholder Date of Birth field for that member.
For example, let's consider Harold, who is currently seventeen years old. In 2023, Harold registers independently for the first time. His particular pantry opts to collect age rather than date of birth. Harold inputs "17" into the designated Age field, representing the maximum age for a "child" in his pantry's records. Upon saving his information, PantrySoft automatically generates a placeholder birthdate for him, set in 2006.
That same year, his pantry counts him on age-based reports as a 17 year old. But because PantrySoft keeps a permanent placeholder birthdate for Harold, he'll still age. Next year he'll show up on reports as an adult (18 years old).
Count of Additional Household Members
The Household Member Widget Type setting controls how additional household member information is collected in the Kiosk and Online Portal.
Kiosk and Online Portal: "Count" style of Additional Household Member gathering:
Kiosk and Online Portal: "Detailed" style of Additional Household Member gathering:
On the Kiosk and Online Portal Registration pages (for instance after clicking New Client on the Kiosk), additional household member information can be gathered 2 ways: Count style and Detailed style. Age/ Date of Birth will be gathered differently depending on the style your pantry uses:
- Detailed Style of Additional Members. With Detailed style, you're collecting specific information about each member of the household; here a Date of Birth field will appear by default. It will change to an Age field with the "Substitute Age For Date Of Birth" setting.
- Count Style of Additional Members. Using the Count style of Additional Household Member info, the Registration page allows you to just count the non-primary members in the household: a tally for each of three age brackets (Child/ Adult/ Senior). After you save, it builds anonymous people, and builds a placeholder birthdate for each of them to make them the appropriate age.
Example: Count of Johnson Family Members. The Johnson family visits a pantry that only gathers counts of the additional members.
Sue, the head of household, answers either an Age field or a DoB field in the Primary Member section; this is determined by the Substitute Age For Date Of Birth setting.
But for additional members, her pantry uses the "Count"/ anonymous style of age count gathering. So when she gets to the Additional Household Member section of the Registration page, it just asks for counts of Child/ Adults/ Seniors. She enters 1 in the Child field for her 12 year old son.
Behind the scenes, PantrySoft builds an anonymous member for her household named "Child." Not knowing the actual age of the child, PantrySoft makes a birthdate for him for this year.