Basics

• Every Contact record in MinistryPlatform is designated as an Individual or a Company. Companies are typically added to the Platform for tracking donations.  
• Company records don't have a gender, marital status, first name, nickname, or other individual-specific fields. These fields are hidden when a Company is selected as the record type.
• Company records should have a Household record, which stores their address and home phone. The Household Name is the Company Name. 
• Companies can be combined using the Combine Contacts Tool.
• There's no overriding reason to "clean up" or remove Companies from MinistryPlatform. But there is at least one good reason to keep them: they probably have historical donations associated with their Donor records. If you find some Companies in your database that need to be removed, use the Combine Contacts Tool to combine them into the *Unassigned Contact record. If you are not confident in your use of this tool, consult with your SPoC.
• Company Contact records can be inactivated if they have not given and have no other activity by setting their Contact Status to "Inactive." See Q4 on the Contacts FAQ page for more information.

Creating Company Records

You can create or edit Company records using the Add/Edit Company Tool. 

The Company Name of a DBA ("Doing Business As") Contact record should be the same as what is printed on the donation, for example, "Smith Consulting." The address record can be edited so that "Attn: John Smith" is found in Address Line 1 and the physical street address is listed on Address Line 2.

Finding Company Records

• Contacts page: Change your view to All Records or Current Companies for Company records to be returned in the search results. The default view (All Individuals) does not return Company records. 
• Participants page: Company records should never appear on the Participants page (Companies should not have Participant records). 
• Donation-related pages/applications: The Donors page of the Platform shows Company records in the default view. The Batch Manager Tool also returns Companies in the search results.
• Applications that only deal with people: Applications like Check-In do not return Company records in search results. 

Linking Companies with Contacts

If a Contact owns a Company, you can go to the individual's Contact record and create a Business Owner Of the relationship on the Relationships sub-page. Sound like a good idea? This view will help you find all Companies with no relationships so you can start adding them (just be sure to change the last donation dates ;)):

Field List
Contacts.[Company_Name] AS [Company Name] , 
Contacts.[Company] AS [Company] ,
Donor_Record_Table.[_Last_Donation_Date] AS [Last Donation Date]

View Clause
Contacts.[Company] = 1 AND Donor_Record_Table.[_Last_Donation_Date] BETWEEN '2020-01-01 00:00:00' AND '2020-12-31 00:00:00' AND Relationship_ID_Table.[Relationship_ID] IS NULL
AND not exists (select 1 from contact_relationships cr where cr.contact_id = contacts.contact_id)

You could put the Company inside their Household with the Household Position "Company," as long as the Company and the Contact share the same address. If you go this route, make sure the Statement Type of the Company's Donor record is set to Individual. Note: If a Household contains a Contact with the Household Position of "Company," the Add/Edit family tool will no longer work for that Household.

Linking Company Donations to the Donor who Directed the Donation

If a Company gives a Donation, you can apply soft credit to that Donation Distribution, linking the Donation Distribution to a Donor. For example, the "Christian Community Foundation" may make many Donations on behalf of many Donors. The Christian Community Foundation record should exist only once. The Soft Credit link ensures a record exists that links each Donation to the Donor who initiated it. Donations only appear on the statement for Christian Community Foundation, but various MinistryPlatform reports exist for internal use that optionally includes soft credit donations.

If a Company gives a Donation that is intended to meet part of a Pledge made by an individual, it is possible to distribute that Donation to the Pledge of the other Donor. This 3rd Party Pledge gift diminishes the balance of the Pledge, but it only appears on the contribution statement of the Company.