With Beacon address autocomplete you can start typing an address, or type a postcode, and Beacon will suggest addresses that match. When you select one, Beacon will populate the different sub-fields within the location field for you - no need to type out the whole address.

You do not need to sign up for a separate location service, address autocomplete is built directly into Beacon.

To enable address autocomplete in your account, head to the Charity preferences under Settings.

Scroll down to the Address autocomplete section, and click the toggle to enable the feature. You'll need to add your organisation's address, as this is a requirement of the Royal Mail database that we use.

Once enabled, you will need to purchase address lookups in order to use this feature. You will also see additional options for using them in forms (see below).

If you do not enable address autocomplete, you can still manually add addresses to Beacon.

You will also see an input box called "Warning limit". This allows you to set when you get a warning (an email and a message displayed in Beacon) that you are running low on looks.

Once, you have enabled Address Lookups, you can turn them on for Forms with this toggle:

Once this is turned on, you can decide if you want the feature to be on by default for Forms. If you turn this on, you will be asked if you want to turn this on for all existing forms:

This can be helpful if you have a large number of forms that you want to turn on. You can still turn this off afterwards on individual forms that you don't want it turned on (for instance Volunteer signups).

Once the form toggle has been turned on, if you go into a form you will now see a new toggle:

This allows you to turn on/off on each form.

Address Autocomplete functionality is available on all forms:

If you run out of Lookups (or turn off the feature), we will show the address line inputs as normal:

If you have Lookups and the feature turned on, it will display similar to the below:

By default, we show the country of the user based on their IP address. However, if the address is different they can change their country for the autocomplete by clicking on the flag icon.

They can also choose to enter the address manually instead as well if they would prefer.

Address lookups can be purchased from your Billing page. Click Settings, then click Billing.

In Beacon, you don’t pay for address searches, you pay once you make a selection from the results that are returned. We call this an 'address lookup' and it costs 2p.

You will need to purchase address lookups separately to your Beacon plan.

You can keep track of how many address lookups you have available from your Billing page.

When you get close to running out of address lookups we'll send an email to your Beacon Admins. When you run out, your address inputs will revert to the manual style.

Beacon's address autocomplete system is powered behind the scenes by Ideal postcodes. We explored a large number of providers and Ideal Postcodes had the best API and were the most cost-effective.

Unfortunately, just like credit card processing, the organisations who provide this functionality don’t do it for free, even for charities. We’ve shopped around to find the very best deal on address lookups, and we’re passing the volume discount on to you. Beacon isn’t charging a fee or taking a cut of the 2p per lookup. Alternative providers like Loqate can charge as much as 6.9p per lookup, so we're comfortable that we've found a really good deal for you!

Yes, though we don't currently support Eircodes for Irish addresses.

Our lookups use the Royal Mail's PAF file for UK addresses, as well as a variety of international datasets and additional supplementary data from Ideal Postcodes. We don't use the Multiple Residences, Not-Yet-Built, or Eircode datasets.

If your address is not showing, it could be a specific flat that has a single delivery point, or not yet added to Royal Mail's data. If you're sure it should be showing, drop our support team a message and we'll have a look for you!

No, this feature has been designed to make manual address input easier and more accurate. Validation of your existing database's addresses (and phone numbers, emails etc) is better done by a data cleansing service as a one-off project outside of Beacon.

No, this isn't supported. This feature is just for manual address inputs.

Yes! Inside every form (if the feature is turned on at the Charity Preference level), you can enable/disable address autocomplete.

Yes! Once you have turned this feature on, there is an additional toggle to turn this on for All Forms, when you enable this an option will appear that allows you to turn this on for all forms.

Yes! When you disable the feature, we will turn this off for all your forms. If you then re-enable the feature, you can then turn them on manually.

Test lookups are only usable inside of the Beacon app (i.e. location fields). You will need to purchase lookups for it to appear on your forms.