In Trips, every person is a top-level contact — there's no "child of" or "spouse of" parent record. Relationships are links between two equal contacts, mirrored so the connection shows up on either contact's drawer.
The Companions tab
Open any contact (from /contacts or from anywhere a contact name links to the drawer) and click the Companions tab. You'll see two things: an Add companion composer at the top, and a list of everyone already linked to this contact below it.
Clicking any linked companion's row swaps the drawer to that contact — same drawer, different person. Use it to bounce between a couple or a family without leaving the panel.
Adding a companion
Companions are always existing contacts in your org. The composer searches your contacts; if the person you need isn't in Trips yet, you create them first and then come back to link.
In the Find a contact field, type at least two characters of a name or email. Results appear in a dropdown.
Click a result. The selected contact appears in a confirmation chip with a Clear button if you picked the wrong one.
Pick the Relationship from the dropdown — Spouse, Partner, Child, Parent, Sibling, Friend, Business partner, or Other.
Optionally add a Label (up to 80 characters) — handy for things like "Eldest daughter" or "Travel buddy". Strongly recommended when you pick Other since the relationship name alone won't describe what they are to each other.
Click Link companion. The relationship saves and immediately appears in the list below.
Supported relationship kinds
Trips ships eight relationship kinds. They're curated on purpose — a fixed list keeps reports and future segmentation predictable. If none fit, use Other and describe the relationship in the Label.
Symmetric
Spouse — both sides labeled Spouse.
Partner — both sides labeled Partner.
Sibling — both sides labeled Sibling.
Friend — both sides labeled Friend.
Business partner — both sides labeled Business partner.
Other — both sides labeled Other.
Asymmetric (auto-flipped)
Parent on one side becomes Child on the other.
Child on one side becomes Parent on the other.
Pick the kind from the perspective of the contact whose drawer you're in. If you're on Tom's drawer adding his daughter Emma, pick Child. When you open Emma's drawer, you'll see Tom listed as Parent automatically.
How the mirror works
Each link is stored on both contacts. That's deliberate: it means opening either Tom's drawer or Sarah's drawer shows the companion straight away — you don't have to remember who you added first, and the list stays accurate from both directions.
The mirror is automatic. You add Tom → Spouse → Sarah on Tom's drawer, and Sarah → Spouse → Tom appears on Sarah's drawer the next time you open it. The Label field copies to both sides as well.
Removing a companion
On the Companions tab, find the row you want to remove and click the unlink icon on the right. A small Unlink? prompt appears with Yes and No buttons inline — no separate modal, no scroll. Click Yes to confirm.
Removing a link drops both mirror rows. Neither side will see the other in their Companions tab after that. The contacts themselves stay — you're only deleting the link, never the people.
What companions do NOT do (yet)
A few things to set expectations on — these are common asks but they're not how Trips currently behaves:
Trip travelers are independent. Linking Sarah as Tom's spouse does not auto-add her to a trip when you add Tom. Add each traveler explicitly on the trip — companions are a contact-level relationship, not a trip-level shortcut.
The client portal doesn't show relationships. Companions are an internal-CRM concept right now. When a client logs into the portal they see their own profile, trips, files, and messages — they don't see who's linked to them.
No age calculation. The companion row shows the date of birth from Core when one is on file, but Trips doesn't compute an age. If you need to know how old a child is, do the math from the DOB shown.
Emergency contact is a separate field. The "Emergency contact" on the contact drawer is its own free-text block (name, phone, email, relationship-as-text). It is not the same as a Companion link and the two don't auto-sync.
Troubleshooting
I added a relationship on Tom but Sarah's Companions tab is empty.
Close Sarah's drawer if it was already open and reopen it. The mirror row is written immediately when you click Link companion on Tom's side, but Sarah's drawer caches its data on first open. A fresh open pulls the latest list.
The typeahead returns no results even though I know the contact exists.
Three things to check: (1) you typed at least two characters — single-letter queries return nothing on purpose, (2) the other contact is in the same organization (Trips is org-scoped end-to-end), and (3) the other contact isn't already linked or isn't the primary themself — those are excluded automatically. If all three pass and you still see nothing, try a different fragment of the name or the email.
I picked the wrong relationship kind. Do I have to unlink and re-add?
No. Add the same companion again with the correct kind — the system recognizes the existing pair and updates it instead of erroring. The Label updates the same way.
Can a child be linked to two parents?
Yes. Each parent-child link is a separate pair. Add Emma as Tom's child on Tom's drawer, then add Emma as Sarah's child on Sarah's drawer. Emma's Companions tab will show both Tom and Sarah, each labeled Parent. Same pattern works for blended families, guardians, or any other multi-parent setup.