What is a duplicate donor account, and why should I periodically review for them?
Duplicate donor accounts occur when one donor has two different donor accounts in GivingFire. In cases like these, the donor will not have access to their complete donation history because it will be split between two records. Further, duplicate accounts will create issues that can confuse donor-based reporting and end-of-year tax statement generation.
Why are there duplicate accounts?
There are a couple ways a duplicate can be created. Donors may make a donation as a guest and enter in a different email than is associated with their original donor account. In other instances, admins can create an additional donor account when entering in offline donations if they do not select the original donor account to attribute the donation to.
How can I find duplicate donor accounts?
In the donor list (from your administrative dashboard, go to Donors > Donor List), you can filter for POSSIBLE duplicate donor accounts by typing in "Possible Duplicate" into the "Donor Tag(s)" field and clicking "Apply Search & Filter". Please note that this will bring up a list of accounts that have the same donor's name - so if there are two different individuals named John Scott in your database, for example, they will both show up in this filtered list simply because they happen to have the same name. Screen this list carefully to be sure that the accounts are actually duplicates of the SAME individual before proceeding to the next step!
For more information on the "Possible Duplicate" tag and other helpful filters, check out our full article on Autotagging.
What do I do with the duplicate accounts once I've found them?
You can do one of two things. First, look to see if the duplicate accounts in question are a result of offline batch entry errors. If so, good news! You can easily fix these duplicate accounts yourself by editing the offline batch(es) in question. Once all donations are correctly attributed, the duplicate account will disappear. If the duplicate accounts in question have resulted from online donations, not to worry, GivingFire Developers can solve this by merging the two (or more!) donor accounts.
What is a merge?
A merge is when we merge the records of two or more donor accounts, so that all giving for a single individual is listed under one account.
How can I merge accounts?
Simply send the links for each duplicate account to your GivingFire Account Manager, and be sure to note which is the 'primary' account (this is the account to which all giving records will be attributed). If you're not sure who your Account Manager is, you can also email these links to support@givingfire.com and we will take it from there. The merge request should be formatted as follows:
John Scott
[Primary] https://yourorg.givingfire.com/dashboard/donors/55893-john-scott
[Duplicate] https://yourorg.givingfire.com/dashboard/donors/55970-john-scott
I can't find the link to a donor account?
In order to find links to the donor accounts, first filter in the Donor List either for possible duplicates if you're not sure which accounts might be duplicates, or for the donor's name if you know which accounts you're looking for. From there, click on the donor's name to go to that donor account. Highlight the URL you see at the top of your browser, then Right-click > Copy Link Address. You can then Right-click > Paste the URL into an email (to either your Account Manager or support@givingfire.com), and do the same for each duplicate account. Don't forget to note which is the primary account once you're done!
If you have any further questions, please contact your Account Manger or support@givingfire.com for more assistance!