Cleaning up duplicates

Every import creates some duplicates. Maiden names, nicknames, typos in email — none of it is your fault. Scout has a workflow to clean them up.

Run the dedupe scan

Go to People → Tools → Find duplicates. Scout looks at every person and ranks possible matches by similarity. You'll see something like:

Sarah Johnson and Sarah K. Johnson — same email, same household. Likely match.

For each pair, you have three options:

• Merge — combines them. Notes, group memberships, and giving history move to the surviving record. The duplicate is deleted.
• Not a match — Scout remembers and won't suggest this pair again.
• Skip — review later.

Pick the survivor

When you merge, Scout asks which person's details to keep. The survivor keeps its profile photo, contact info, and birthdate. You can override per field if needed.

After dedupe

Run the scan once after every import. After that, run it monthly — usually 2–3 minutes for the average church.

If a merge looks wrong after the fact, you can undo it within 7 days from Settings → Audit log.