Last reviewed: September 2026.

Clients leave, pass away, or turn out to be duplicates. Accounts get closed or moved. This article explains how to archive a household, how to close an account, what each report and Surge does with them, and how your CRM sync and spreadsheet imports can do it for you.

Archiving hides a household without deleting anything. Use it for households that are no longer clients, deceased clients, prospects who declined, households you merged into another one, and duplicates.

When you archive a household:

Admins can still build a packet for an archived household on purpose, for example a final packet. On the Surge page, open Filters, set Household Status to Include archived, select the household, and prepare. The packet uses the captured values, and the household carries the warning "Household is archived".

Archiving and restoring a household requires the Lead Advisor or Admin role, plus write access to that household. Other users who try see "You do not have permission to archive households."

The dialog is titled "Archive household?" and says the household will be "hidden from lists, reports, and surges. Nothing is deleted — you can restore at any time." A toast confirms the archive and offers Undo.

At the top of Households, use the Active | Archived | All switch. Active is the default. Archived rows show a muted Archived chip. Point at the chip to see the archive date and reason. If nothing is archived, the Archived view says "No archived households".

To restore a household:

Restoring clears the reason, note, and archive date. The household returns to lists, reports, and Surge. Its Value Adds recalculate from current data the next time you open them. The confirmation toast offers Undo.

Archive when you may need the household again or want to keep its history. Delete only when the record should not exist at all.

If you try to delete a household that has saved Value Add snapshots or Surge packets, SurgeTK asks "Delete permanently?" The message says how many snapshots or packets "become unreachable" if the household is deleted, and adds "Archiving keeps everything and hides it from lists." Click Archive instead to archive, or Delete anyway to delete.

You can also delete an archived household. Switch to Archived, open the row menu, and choose Delete.

SurgeTK treats an account as closed when its Account Status is Closed, Transferred, or Inactive, or when it has a Date Closed. Statuses such as Dormant or Suspended that come from Redtail or an import are stored as Inactive. Pending and Other do not count as closed.

A closed account stays in SurgeTK with its balance and history. It stops counting toward household totals and leaves the reports listed below. Any user who can edit accounts can close or reopen one, as long as the household is not archived.

When every account in a household is closed, Surge shows the warning "All accounts closed".

The dialog is titled "Close account?" and says the account "will stop counting toward household totals and drop out of the Value Adds. Its balance and history are kept, and you can reopen it at any time." The household total updates at once. The row stays in the list, muted, with a Closed, Transferred, or Inactive chip.

You can also do this in the account window. Its Status section shows Account Status, Date Closed, and Reason. In edit mode, set Account Status to Closed, Transferred, or Inactive, fill in Date Closed and Reason, and save. SurgeTK confirms with "Account closed." Changing the date or reason of an account that is already closed shows "Account status updated."

On the Accounts tab, open the closed account's row menu and choose Reopen. There is no confirmation step. Reopening clears the close date and reason, and the account counts again. In the account window, set Account Status to Active and save. SurgeTK confirms with "Account reopened."

If closed accounts are hidden on the list, click Show first (see below).

Closed accounts stay visible on the Accounts tab unless a setting hides them:

When accounts are hidden, a line above the table reads "1 closed account hidden." or, for example, "3 closed accounts hidden." with a Show link. Click Show to reveal them. The line then reads "Showing closed accounts." with a Hide link.

A manual Exclude on the account's Exclusions tab always removes an account from a report. A manual Include keeps a closed account in Buckets, Guardrails, Net Worth, Beneficiary, and the 1099 Letter. Homework still applies its date rules to a closed account.

This is why a closed account can still appear on a 1099 Letter or a Meeting Worksheet: those reports cover a period, and the account was open during part of it. Enter the real Date Closed so the reports decide correctly.

Your CRM sync can close accounts and archive households for you. In every case, a status you set by hand, or through a spreadsheet import, always wins. A sync never deletes, reopens, re-archives, or restores a household or account that a person changed.

Open Settings › Integrations and click Sync Filters on the Redtail card. Only Admins can change these settings. Click Save Filters when you are done. The footer explains: "Filters apply to the contacts your next sync reads. To apply them to every contact, tick “Re-read every contact” when you sync."

Closed Accounts: "What happens when Redtail marks an account Closed, Transferred, or Inactive."

The control shows the mode your firm is on. Firms that never chose a mode are on Mark closed, unless they had the older closed-account filter switched on, in which case they are on Delete (legacy).

Hide closed accounts: see above.

Household Lifecycle from Redtail: "When every member of a household is deceased or no longer a client, SurgeTK can suggest archiving it, or archive it for you."

Below the mode, you can tell SurgeTK what each Redtail contact status means: Default, Active client, No longer a client, or Deceased. The screen explains: "Statuses left on Default follow SurgeTK's built-in reading (Deceased-type statuses read as deceased; Inactive, Former, Ex-, Terminated, Archived, Closed and Estate read as no longer a client)."

How SurgeTK judges a household: it looks at every member. If all members are deceased, the archive reason is Deceased. If all members are deceased or no longer a client, the reason is Terminated. Any other member keeps the household active, including a member you added by hand. Only households with at least one Redtail contact are judged.

In Suggest mode, the Households page shows a banner such as "Redtail suggests archiving 1 household on this page. Use its row menu to apply or dismiss." Each suggested row gets an Archive suggested chip. Its row menu offers Apply Redtail suggestion…, which opens the archive dialog with the reason filled in, and Dismiss suggestion. A dismissed suggestion does not come back on later syncs. Turning the mode Off clears all suggestions.

In Automatic mode, each sync archives up to 25 qualifying households and captures their final snapshots. If more qualify, the rest follow on later syncs. When a household that the sync archived qualifies as active again, the sync restores it. Households you archived or restored by hand or by import are never changed.

Open Settings › Integrations and click Map Fields on the Zoho card. Only Admins can change the mapping. Click Save when you are done.

Household Status Mapping (on the Households tab): "Map values of a Zoho household status field to a SurgeTK lifecycle status. Applied on every sync; households you archived or restored by hand always win."

A household whose value matches no row counts as Active. Households this map archives get the reason Terminated. When a household's value later maps to Active, the sync restores it. Households you archived or restored by hand or by import are never touched.

Excluded Households (in Household Sync Filtering on the same tab, once you have added Excluded Client Types): what happens to a SurgeTK household whose client type matches an excluded value.

New setups start on Archive in SurgeTK. Setups created before this choice existed stay on Remove from SurgeTK (legacy) until you change it.

Closed Accounts (in Close-out Filtering on the Investable Assets and Bank Accounts tabs): map the Zoho field that stores the close date to Date Closed, choose a Previous Tax Year Cutoff year (the default is last year), then choose what happens to accounts closed before January 1 of that year.

New sections start on Keep as closed accounts. Existing sections stay on Remove from SurgeTK (legacy) until you change it. A Deep sync does not run closed-account cleanup. The sync dialog notes: "Note: a deep sync skips closed-account cleanup — run an ordinary sync for that."

The Contact Import template has three columns for this: Household Status, Archive Reason, and Archived Date. Its Status Values sheet lists the accepted statuses: Active and Archived. SurgeTK also understands common variants:

Archive Reason accepts the reason names (Terminated, Deceased, Transferred out, Prospect declined, Merged, Duplicate, Other) and common variants. A reason in this column beats the reason implied by the status. Text SurgeTK does not recognize is stored as the household's note. The reason then comes from the status, or is Other when the status implies none. Archived Date sets the archive date. Leave it blank to use today's date.

SurgeTK applies the status once per household after it reads all rows. If any row of a household says Active, the household stays active. A mix of Active and Archived rows for one household gives the warning "Conflicting Household Status values for one household — kept Active, nothing archived". An archive made by an import captures final Value Add snapshots for up to 25 households per import. Beyond that, the household is still archived and the row gets the warning "Archived without final Value Add snapshots (per-import minting cap reached) — capture them from the household page". Undoing the import reverses the archives and restores it made, but keeps any archive or close changes you made by hand after the import.

The Account Import template has Account Status, Date Closed, and Close Reason columns. Its Status Values sheet lists the accepted values. Account Status: Active, Closed, Transferred, Inactive, Pending. Close Reason: Closed, Transferred out, Liquidated, Merged, Other.

Variants are understood: Dormant and Suspended become Inactive, Terminated becomes Closed, and Open or Funded become Active. A Date Closed or Close Reason on an open account with no closing status is ignored with a warning. If rows for one account disagree, nothing is applied, with the warning "Conflicting Account Status values for one account — nothing applied" or "Conflicting Date Closed values for one account — no date applied".

Imports never restore a household or reopen an account on their own. If a row targets an archived household, the data is still applied and the row gets the warning "Household is archived". A row that adds a new client, account, asset, liability, or policy to an archived household gets "Household is archived — new record added to an archived household". A value imported into a closed account is applied with the warning "Closed account received a value". These warnings appear on the import's Warnings tab.