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Geolocating stores the precise latitude and longitude of a household’s address. Without it, map-based features in Church Admin won’t work — the people map, the small groups map, and any map shortcodes on your public-facing website all depend on coordinates being stored against each household record.
Before you start — Google API key required
Geolocating uses Google Maps to look up coordinates from a street address. This requires a Google API key to be set up in Church Admin before the map and geocoding features will work. If you haven’t done this yet, see Google API key setup first and come back here once the key is saved.
What geolocating is used for
- People map — displays your congregation as pins on a map, useful for visualising where your church reaches geographically
- Small groups map — shows where small groups meet, helping new members find a nearby group
- Address list shortcodes — any map view on your public-facing website showing congregation locations
- Household records — the map pin on each household’s edit screen confirms the address is correctly located
Method 1 — Geocode a single household
This is done when adding or editing a household. Go to Church Admin → People, find the household, and open the edit screen. In the address section, type the address with commas between each part and click Please click here to update map location.
Google Maps looks up the address and drops a pin at the approximate location. If the pin lands in the wrong place — for example on the wrong end of a long road, or at a postcode centre rather than the specific house — drag it to the correct position.
Click Save to store the coordinates against the household. The latitude and longitude are now saved and the household will appear on all map views.
Method 2 — Bulk geocode all households at once
If you have imported a large number of households via CSV, or if many of your existing households have never been geocoded, the bulk geocode tool saves you from opening and saving each record individually. Go to Church Admin → People → Bulk geocode.
The tool works through all households that don’t yet have coordinates stored and attempts to geocode them automatically using Google Maps. A few things to be aware of:
- Google API rate limits apply — if you have a very large directory, the bulk geocode may need to run in batches. Google’s Geocoding API has a daily request limit on free tier accounts; if you hit it, wait until the following day and run it again.
- Accuracy depends on address quality — the geocoder can only be as accurate as the address data in your directory. Incomplete or inconsistently formatted addresses may be placed at an approximate location or fail to geocode at all.
- Check the results — after a bulk geocode it’s worth opening the people map to spot any pins that look obviously wrong, then correcting those households individually using Method 1.
Addresses that won’t geocode
Some addresses can’t be found automatically by Google — particularly in rural areas, new housing developments, or countries where address formats differ from what Google Maps expects. In these cases, use Method 1 to open the household, zoom into the map manually, and drag the pin to the correct location. This bypasses the address lookup and saves the pin position directly.