How to fix overlapping stay errors

Author: Betty | Date Created: December 22, 2025

What this is

This article is to help understand and correct overlapping stay errors. These issues can cause errors and data quality issues on federal reports like System Performance (SPM), Point-Time (PIT)and Housing Inventory (HIC) Counts.

What you need to know

Follow these steps

When a client moves from one residential project to another, their stay dates should not overlap. In other words, the client shouldn’t appear to be living in two places at the same time.

Example one:

If a client has two Entry records—one for their current Emergency Shelter (ES) stay and one for a previous Transitional Housing (TH) stay—the TH Exit Date should be on or before the ES Project Start Date. This shows that the client left the TH program before (or on the same day as) they entered the ES program.

Here is an example of an overlapping stay that will cause an error in a report:

To fix this error, you may need to take one or both of these steps:

1. Check the client’s Exit Date from the TH program.

• If your program entered this data, update the Exit Date if it’s wrong.
• If another agency entered it, contact them so they can review and correct it.

Click on the action button and chose "Edit Exit Workflow" to change exit date.

2. Check the client’s Entry Date into the ES program.

• If your program entered this data, update the Entry Date if needed.
• If another agency entered it, contact them to make any necessary corrections.

Click on the action button and chose "Edit Project Entry Workflow" to change Entry date.

Here is an example of how the ES and TH stays could be resolved to no longer conflict: 

Example two:

If a client has two Entry records—one for their current Permanent Housing (PH) stay and one for a previous Emergency Shelter (ES) stay—the ES Exit Date should be on or before the PH Housing Move-In Date. This shows the client left the shelter before (or on the same day as) they moved into permanent housing.

Here is an example of an overlapping stay that will cause an error in a report: 

To fix this error, you may need to do one or both of the following:

1. Check the client’s Exit Date from the ES program.

• If your program entered this information, update the Exit Date if it’s incorrect.
• If another agency entered it, contact them so they can correct it.

Click on the action button and chose "Edit Exit Workflow" to change exit date.

2. Check the client’s Housing Move-In Date for the PH program.

• If your program entered this information, correct the date if needed.
• If another agency entered it, reach out to them so they can review and update it.

Click on the action button and chose "Edit Enrollment" to change the housing move in date

Here is an example of how the PH and ES stays could be resolved to no longer conflict: