How and why duplicate profiles are created
Congregants can enter their own information into Planning Center when registering for an event, filling out a form, or giving. Sometimes people don't always use the same information that's in their profile (or accidentally make a typo!), and when that happens, a duplicate profile is created.
In addition to incorrect information and typos, a few scenarios and security considerations can cause Planning Center to create duplicate profiles, which this article explains.
Regardless of how a duplicate profile is created, Planning Center offers a duplicate detection and resolution feature to minimize administrative work while keeping your people and their information safe.
Why duplicate profiles get created
When someone gives, joins a group, or fills out a form, they must enter their name and email address. Planning Center then attempts to match to any of the following fields with existing profiles:
First name / Given name / Nickname
Last name
Email address
If those fields don't match an existing profile, whether due to a typo or a different name or email address being entered, the system creates a new profile.
Additionally, in Registrations, if someone registers a person not in their household, a duplicate profile will be created even if the registration contact uses the same name and email address as their existing profile.
Tip
To figure out why a specific duplicate profile was created, compare the profiles in the duplicate detector, which shows when and where a profile was created.
When duplicate profiles are necessary
Duplicate profiles are necessary in some situations to maintain your congregants' personal safety and your church's data integrity.
Personal safety
Duplicates are created from Registrations when someone registers a person outside their household who already has a profile in your church. As a safety measure, Planning Center creates a duplicate profile for those people rather than allowing someone outside their household to view or change information on their original profile or household.
Here's an example to help explain why:
Say Bob and Larry are both congregants at your church. Both have existing profiles but aren't a part of the same household. Bob signs them both up for an event.
Since Larry isn't in Bob's household, Bob doesn't have permission to sign Larry up using his existing profile, as the registration process could edit Larry's personal information. If Bob weren't Larry's friend but actually a stalker, it would pose a real safety issue for Larry if Bob could access and edit Larry's personal information.
Data integrity
It's common for people to share the same name or an email address, often within the same household.
To maintain your church's data integrity, it's safer for Planning Center to create a new profile that can be merged with the correct person's information, rather than adding the wrong person's information to an existing profile. (If profiles are in the same household, Planning Center won't suggest them as potential duplicates to account for children named after parents.)
Using the same example from above, if Bob were to enter Larry's email address or age incorrectly during the registration process and it updated Larry's profile, that would create inaccurate information in your database.
Find and fix duplicate profiles
Use the duplicate detector feature in People to quickly identify and merge potential duplicate profiles. This merges the data from both profiles into one remaining profile — this way, if a duplicate is created because someone used a different email address, after merging, both email addresses are associated with the remaining profile, allowing the person to use either email address to log in in the future without creating another duplicate profile.
When merging, make the original profile the primary one, but keep the name fields from the new profile as the person entered them. Most people enter their name the same way every time, so keeping what they've entered will prevent additional duplicate profiles in the future.
The Profile overview article explains the best way to enter names in Planning Center, but the key takeaway is to use the name fields as follows:
First Name: What the person usually goes by.
Given Name: The person's legal first name, if different from the first name they usually go by.
Nickname: Nicknames are optional names, only shown on the person's profile page.
Prevent future duplicate profiles
The best way to prevent duplicate profiles from being created is to require your members to log in to Church Center before taking actions such as filling out a form or registering for an event.
Select the Require submitters to be logged in to Church Center option in a form's Settings tab and the Require login option on a signup's Settings tab to ensure people are logged in before filling out a form or signup. Doing so will significantly reduce the number of duplicate profiles that are created.
And when you email a link to an event, donation, group, or form, first provide specific instructions for logging in. For example:
"Use the email address to which this message was sent."
"Enter your name exactly as you see it here: First Name {{ to.first_name }} Last Name {{ to.last_name }}."