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

Click Find duplicates from the People page. Scout looks at every person and ranks possible matches:

• High confidence: same email address and same last name. Almost always a real duplicate.
• Likely match: same name plus a shared household or phone number. Worth a look.

For each pair, you have two options:

• Keep this one: click on whichever side you want to survive. The other record's notes, group memberships, giving history, and household ties move to the surviving record. The duplicate is deleted.
• Not a match: Scout remembers and won't suggest this pair again.

What gets merged

When you keep one record, Scout brings everything attached to the other one over: pastoral notes, group memberships, team assignments, donations, household memberships, check-ins, follow-ups. Empty fields on the survivor (email, phone, photo, address) get filled in from the absorbed record. The earliest "added" date wins.

If both records are linked to a Scout sign-in account, Scout won't auto-merge. Resolve which account stays first under Settings → Users.

After dedupe

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

Every merge is logged with a full snapshot of the absorbed record under Settings → Audit log for your records.