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Duplicate records creep in for all sorts of reasons — someone registers themselves on the website when they’re already in the directory, a CSV import creates a second entry for a person added manually, or a name is entered slightly differently on two occasions. Church Admin has a built-in duplicate checker that finds likely duplicates and lets you merge them without losing any data.
How duplicates are detected
The duplicate checker looks for people records with the same or very similar names in the directory. It flags these as potential duplicates for you to review — it doesn’t merge anything automatically.
Church Admin is used by congregations all over the world, and it’s designed to reflect that. In many cultures a married couple will have different last names — whether that’s because one partner kept their own name, because naming conventions work differently, or because names are recorded in a different order. A couple with different surnames living at the same address is not a duplicate; they should be two people in the same household. The duplicate checker works on name similarity, so it won’t flag these correctly structured records as duplicates.
Where it does flag a pair, always click Display household to check the records before merging — the checker is a starting point for your review, not an automatic fix.
Running the duplicate check
Go to Church Admin → People → Check duplicates. The check runs and within a few seconds presents a list of potential duplicate pairs.
For each pair you have two options:
- Display household — opens both household records so you can compare them and confirm whether they are genuinely the same person before deciding what to do
- Merge — takes you to the merge screen to combine the two records
Merging two records
The merge screen shows the two records side by side, with every field displayed as a row. The left-hand record is the one that will be kept — it is the first occurrence of that person in the database.
For each row, you can choose which version of the data to keep. If the left-hand record has the right email address but the right-hand record has the correct phone number, you can pick the best value for each field individually. When you’re happy with your selections, click Merge at the bottom of the screen.
What happens to the data
After merging, your choices are saved to the left-hand record and the right-hand record is permanently deleted. It’s worth being clear about what is and isn’t carried across:
- Personal details — whichever values you selected on the merge screen are saved to the surviving record
- Ministries, classes, and groups — the first (left-hand) person’s memberships are kept; the second person’s are deleted. If the duplicate had ministry or group memberships that the original didn’t, note these down before merging and add them manually afterwards.
Merging is permanent and cannot be undone, so take a moment to review both records carefully — particularly the ministries and groups — before clicking Merge.
Not all flagged pairs are genuine duplicates
The checker may flag pairs that are not actually duplicates — for example a father and son with the same name, or two unrelated people who happen to have very similar names. If a pair is correctly flagged but the records are genuinely two different people, simply leave them as they are. The checker will flag them again next time you run it, but there is no harm in that.
Preventing duplicates
The most common source of duplicates is someone registering on the website when they’re already in the directory. A few things help prevent this:
- The registration form checks the submitted email address against existing records — if a match is found, it shows a login form rather than a new registration form. Encourage people to use the same email address they gave to the church.
- After a CSV import, run the duplicate checker straight away to catch any records that were already in the directory manually.
- Creating user accounts for people already in the directory (rather than letting them self-register) also reduces the chance of duplicates appearing.