A parent calls. They want to know their kid's bunk assignment, whether their health form came through, and why there's a balance on the account. Before Campminder, that was three different screens, maybe a spreadsheet, and a heavy dose of stress.
The Unified Person Record — UPR — puts all of it in one place. Every person connected to your camp gets one: campers, staff, parents, donors, alumni, contacts. Same layout, every time.
What you'll learn:
How records are organized in Campminder before you even open one
How the two upper cards are organized and what each one shows
Which lower tabs exist, which record types have them, and what lives there
How to move through a record quickly when someone is waiting on the other end of the phone
Before You Begin: Set Up Permissions
UPRs hold sensitive information — health history, financials, contact details. Before your team starts working in them, make sure the right people have the right access.
Navigate to Admin > Login and Permissions > User Groups.
Click the yellow Edit button next to the group that needs access.
Scroll to the bottom of the list and toggle on the appropriate Unified Person Record and UPR - Add Person permissions.
Click the green Save button.
📋 Note: You control exactly how much access each group has — view only, edit, add new records, or all of the above. Take a few minutes here before opening day so you're not troubleshooting access issues mid-season.
How Records Are Organized: Partitions
Before you open a single record, it helps to know where records live. Campminder organizes camper and staff records into partitions — logical groupings that reflect where someone is in their journey with your camp.
💡 Tip: Partitions are also how you navigate the system day-to-day. Most of your pre-season work happens in Enrollment Management. Once camp starts, you'll live in Camper Management. Knowing which partition to check first saves real time.
Camper records move through three partitions:
Lead Management holds prospects who haven't applied yet — it's non-seasonal, so leads stay here indefinitely until they apply.
Enrollment Management is your active pipeline: returning campers, new applicants, and anyone who's withdrawn from a session. It resets each season.
Camper Management is where enrolled campers live — anyone in at least one session for the current season.
Staff follow the same logic with two partitions:
Staff Recruitment holds applicants who haven't been hired yet.
Staff Management holds anyone with a Hired status. Both are non-seasonal — staff records don't reset between seasons.
📋Note: Parents, donors, alumni, and contacts don't have partitions at all. A parent moves from PL (parent lead) to PA (parent applied) to PE (parent enrolled) as their child progresses, but those are statuses, not separate partitions.
The Upper Half of the UPR: Two Cards, One Instant Read
The top of every UPR has two cards. Left card: who this person is. Right card: what they're doing at your camp. Once that's in your head, the whole layout makes sense.
Video Walkthrough
The Contact Card (upper left)
Name, preferred name, gender, birthdate, age, and current grade live at the very top.
Mailing address sits just below that.
For camper records, parents' contact info is displayed front and center — no digging required.
For adults and staff, you'll see phone numbers, email addresses, and any social media accounts that have been added.
Below the photo: tiles and tags. Tiles are automatically assigned and reflect current status. Tags are created by you — fully customizable labels that help you organize records the way your camp actually works.
Mary's Contact Card shows two custom tags — "Volunteer" and "Alumni" — applied by her camp. Her red PE tile indicates she's a parent of an enrolled camper, a status she's held for two seasons.
To edit anything here, click the Person Edit link, make your changes, and hit save.
📋 Note: Tiles and tags are covered in depth in their own articles — but the short version is: tiles tell you where someone stands, tags tell you what you've decided to call them.
The Contact Info Card (upper right)
This card adapts based on who you're looking at. The tab at the top will say Child Info, Staff Info, Alumni Info, or similar.
For a camper: school, division assignment, enrollment notes, lead source, and T-shirt size if you collect it.
For staff: job title, application or hiring status, and qualifications.
Below that, season-specific details — session enrollments, bunk assignments, travel details — all editable via the Session Edit link.
The Relationships tab lists everyone connected to this person in your database. Every name is clickable. Jump directly to a parent, sibling, or spouse's record from here, and create new relationships without leaving the page.
The History tab gives you a full timeline: past sessions, roles, bunk assignments, with editable fields.
💡 Tip: If the upper section is taking up too much screen real estate, collapse it using the button in the center of the screen. More room for the lower tabs where most of the work happens.
🎯 Try it now: Open any camper record. Look at both upper cards. Click the Relationships tab and follow one name to a connected record. Come back when you've done it.
🏕️ Camps in Action:
A registrar was handling a last-minute cabin switch two days before opening.
She needed to confirm the camper's bunk, check whether the parents had a different address on file than the emergency contact, and make a note for the nurses — all in the same phone call. She stayed in the UPR the whole time: bunk details in the Contact Info card, parent info in the Contact card, and a note dropped in before she hung up. One record, one call, done.
💡 Tip: The Session Edit link in the Contact Info card is where you update enrollment status — marking a camper as enrolled, cancelled, left early, or dismissed. It's worth learning that flow early so it's second nature by the time the season gets hectic.
The Lower Half: Where the Day-to-Day Work Lives
The bottom of the UPR is organized into tabs. Which tabs appear depends on the type of record — a camper and a donor have very different needs.
Camper and staff records are the most fully featured, because they connect directly with CampInTouch, pulling in data from forms, applications, and financial transactions.
Video Walkthrough
Tabs on every record:
Household — Every person belongs to a household, even if they live alone. Campers show their Primary Childhood Household: parents, siblings, shared address. Staff and adults show their Principal Household.
Notes — Anything your team needs to track about this person. Notes can be categorized, made seasonal, and have files attached.
Bulletins — Anything flagged as relevant to this person from the main bulletin board surfaces here.
Comm. — Your hub for all direct communication. Send emails, generate person-specific documents, and review the full historical email log via the dropdown.
Photo — Profile photos live here, whether uploaded manually or pulled from an application or form.
Donations — Add a pledge or gift on any record type and the Donor tile appears automatically. Donations from other records that credit this person also show up here.
Above, we see the tabs available on a camper's lower record card.
Tabs for campers and staff:
Tab | Who Has It | What's There |
Custom | Child campers, adult campers, alumni, staff | Custom fields your camp has created |
Forms | Child campers, adult campers, alumni, staff | Submitted forms — view, print, mark complete |
Financial | Child campers, adult campers, hired staff | Tuition and fees (campers); salary info (staff) |
Accts. | Child campers, staff | Camp store / discretionary account transactions |
Medical | Child campers, staff | Health history, allergies, treatment logs, incident records |
Cabin/Bunk | Child campers, staff | Current and historical bunk assignments |
Travel | Child campers, staff | Arrival/departure plans, travel form submissions |
Schedule | Child campers only | Activity assignments, electives, achievements |
App | Staff only | Full staff application broken into sections for review |
📋 Note: If a tab you're expecting isn't there, check the record type. The Medical tab lives on the camper's record — not the parent's. The App tab is staff only. For alumni, the Financial tab includes a season dropdown so you can pull up historical financials from any year they attended.
💡 Tip: The Forms tab is one of the most reliable pre-season checklists you have. Incomplete forms show up clearly, and you can mark them complete manually once paper versions are received — useful for families who mail things in.
🎯 Try it now: Open a camper record and click through every tab in the lower half. Then open a staff record and compare. Note what's different. Come back once you've explored both.
🏕️ Camps in Action
A camp nurse noticed a severe allergy flagged on a camper's health history form — visible in both the Forms tab and the Medical tab.
She wanted to make sure every staff member who pulled up that record would see it immediately, not just the health center team. She opened the camper's UPR, clicked Person Edit, and added an attention note so it would display prominently at the top of the record. The allergy was already documented through the medical form — the attention note was an extra layer of visibility for anyone interacting with that camper during the day.
Before you move on, check yourself:
Can you name the three camper partitions and describe what kind of record lives in each one?
Can you describe what the left upper card shows vs. the right upper card?
Can you name two tabs that exist on camper records but not on parent records?
Ready for the next step?
Decode the Tile System — read status tiles at a glance on any record
Use Tags to Label and Organize Records — build the custom categories your camp actually needs
Update Session Status from the Camper's UPR — make enrollment changes without leaving the record