Merging Duplicate Athletes or Parents

➧ Accessing the de-duplicate tools

These tools are accessed from the "Manage duplicate people" link on your People page, or by going to Settings > Data Maintenance Tools. 

➧ From People:

➧ From Settings:

➧ Merge Duplicate Athletes

• The system will usually default to the user with the earliest created date, but you can change the direction of the merge (unless the athlete is a USA Swimming member - discussed in the next section).
• You may need to check with the parents to confirm the birthdate, and what name format they wish to use.

Click on the Merge button after confirming the direction of the merge. 

➧ USA Swimming Athletes 

• If one account does not have a USA Swimming membership you can merge the non-USA Swimming account into the USA Swimming account.
• If they are both USA Swimming accounts, you'll need to disconnect each athlete from USA Swimming and then you can merge their accounts. ➞ See how to resolve this issue in the USA Swimming Account Management article.

➧ Merge Duplicate Parents/Guardians

• The system will usually default to the user with the earliest created date, unless one user has more information (i.e., last login, or account members). 
• Account Members are listed to provide assistance identifying cases where a team has parents with the same names. The account members would help determine if it's the same person or not.

Click on the Merge button after confirming the direction of the merge. 

➧ What happens when I merge accounts?

When you merge accounts, you end up with one “version” of the parent or athlete with all their time history and family relationships intact. No data is lost.

• All non-conflicting data from each account will be merged.
• Conflicting data will be replaced with the account you choose to merge INTO. 
• If there are members in the account you are merging FROM, they will not be deleted, but rather put into their own household account.

We are happy to help if you have questions. ➞ Submit a support ticket with details. We will take a look and reply with instructions or contact you to discuss further. 

➧ Reasons duplicate records could be created and how to avoid them

There are many options for how parent/athlete/coach accounts are created on a team site - roster/historical imports, registration, manual creation by a team admin. 

The system uses smart-matching technology when a team imports a roster or historical data and a user later registers or is created manually. However, if there are differences in key details—such as a nickname instead of a legal name, a misspelled name or email address, or a different birthdate for an athlete—the system may not be able to confidently match the records.

In these cases, a new user record will be created rather than risk overwriting an existing (and potentially unrelated) user.

How to avoid duplicates:

1. Use a registration form: The best way to avoid duplicates, is to have your members register and avoid creating them manually. They are required to sign in to register, so their existing contact information will be auto-filled and they can update their contact information during this process. The form can be very basic or contain all the bells and whistles.
2. Sync up your systems: If your team uses another meet management system to run meets and you need to import a results file, duplicates will be created if there are differences the system cannot match up, especially when birthdates are in your team site and not your meet management system. Export your Athlete Roster report and import this roster into the other system and address any duplicate athletes there before importing the results file. 

➧ Other ways to identify duplicates

Some accounts are just different enough that they won't show up on the data maintenance tools. It's likely that the parent or athlete will eventually notice and notify you, but you can take proactive measures to check for them as well.

 Here are other ways duplicates can be identified:

1. Look for similar names in the "Years On Team Report" in Reports. This report lists the cumulative number of years on your team, even if an athlete skips a season. 
2. Another way to accomplish this is to review the ”Rookie Athlete Report” with the “Non-returning Athlete Report”. Obviously, an athlete shouldn’t be on both.
3. Compare the two profiles in People to determine if you have an duplicate athlete.