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People Types categorise individuals in your directory by life stage — Adult, Teenager, Child, and any others you add. They appear on every person record and can be used to filter the directory and target communications to a specific age group.
The default people types
Church Admin comes with three people types out of the box:
- Adult
- Teenager
- Child
Adult and Child cannot be deleted as they are used internally by the plugin — for example, the Children’s Work module relies on the Child type to identify which people to include in age-related groups. You can rename them if you need different terminology, but they need to exist.
Adding a new people type
Common additions include Young Adults, Seniors, or Toddler — anything that reflects a life stage your church wants to track and communicate with separately.
Go to Church Admin → Settings → People types to see your current list.
Click Add People Type, type the name of the new type, and click Save.
The new type appears immediately in the People Type dropdown when adding or editing a person record, and becomes available as a filter option in the directory.
Deleting a people type
Any people type you have added can be deleted from the list. Adult and Child cannot be deleted. Before deleting a type, make sure no one in the directory is currently assigned to it — or reassign them first — otherwise those records will be left without a people type.
Using people types for filtering and communications
People type is one of the filter options in the People directory. Filter by a people type and the resulting list becomes your audience for a bulk email or SMS — useful for age-specific communications such as a youth event invitation or a seniors’ morning letter.
You can also combine people type with other filters — for example, filtering by people type (Teenager) and member type (Regular Attender) at the same time to target a very specific group. See Address list filtering for more detail.
People types vs Member types
These two categorisation systems serve different purposes and work alongside each other:
- People type — describes life stage (Adult, Teenager, Child, Young Adult, Seniors). Relatively stable — a person’s people type doesn’t change often.
- Member type — describes relationship to the church (Visitor, Regular Attender, Member). Changes over time as someone moves through the journey of joining the church. See Member types.