Does anybody out there have a policy of keeping copies of old address records and marking them inactive?
I notice that Tess prompts you to keep a copy of the old address if you make a change to the address in the addresses tab. But it doesn't prompt you if you make a change in the general tab. Why not? Has anybody been able to set Tess up to prompt and make the copy when changing the address in the general tab?
It is our policy to inactive old addresses and keep them. We have not tried to set up a prompt or means of preventing users from changing the address in the general tab and possibly overwriting an address that should have been saved and inactivated. We just train users to keep them and trust that they adhere.
We actually set up an address type of "Previous Address" & "Bad/Wrong Address" and mark the old address as inactive. This is helpful when you get a prospect list b/c sometimes they are not as up-to-date with addresses as you are & it makes match ups more accurate. From a consortium stand point it can reduce the number of duplicates created when organizations do account match ups for conversion.
Also, changes to the general tab are tracked on the Transactions Tab under Audit History- so you can still find the original info and add it back in. We run a constituent audit report on donors to review changes made to those accounts and will add the original info back into the address tab if necessary.
We have been keeping old addresses at Yale since our go-live, but we have recently changed our practice, as the users didn't find the old addresses at all useful, and the information was just cluttering up the screen. I haven't deleted all of the inactive addresses yet, but we're no longer in the habit of saving them.