Overview
Here are the questions we get most frequently about contact profiles, including auto merge policies for duplicates.
Linked Articles:
- Using the Contact Duplicates Tool
I cannot find a contact I expect to have in Kindful. Where could it be?
There are a few things to consider when looking for a "missing" contact. The first thing is to check your Archived Contacts. To do this, head to the Contacts page and filter "Is Archived: Yes" to find a list. You can look through the list to find the missing contact, or you can also add in a filter "By Name: 'name'" to find the specific contact you are seeking. If you can locate this contact, you can un-archive it by heading to the profile and clicking on the "Profile" tab. From here, you can scroll to the bottom of this page to manage the archived status.
Why is a new contact profile created for this person every time they donate?
Kindful's first priority is that you have good data, and merging contacts cannot be undone. It will typically err on the side of not merging contacts, to save you the hassle of having to pull transactions apart from inside a single contact profile. Or worse, having incorrect data about which transactions came from whom!
When someone completes a transaction, they are automatically sent a confirmation email to the email address they provided. If they click the link to confirm their email address, then all future transactions will automatically be placed in their profile. If they do not, this will not happen, and new contact profiles will be created; Kindful was waiting for the contact to prove that they owned the email address, and they did not.
If they have more than one contact profile due to multiple transactions, then later go back and click the confirmation link to confirm their email, Kindful will retroactively merge all profiles created by those transactions that share the email.
What happens if two contacts are merged, and each profile has a separate credit card?
If Contact A (with saved credit card X) is merged into Contact B (with saved credit card Y), Contact B will have both credit cards X and Y is saved payment methods on the merged profile. If either contact had recurring transactions tied to the respective credit cards, those recurring transactions would remain on the final merged profile, still tied to the same credit card.
What happens if two contacts are merged, and each one has a primary email and phone number? Is the email and phone number of the merged contact lost?
If each contact has a primary email and/or phone, and the merged contact has a different primary email and/or phone than the primary contact (and the alternate email and/or phone is blank on the primary), then the secondary contact's email and/or phone will become the alternate email and/or phone on the newly merged contact.
I have contact duplicates that don't appear in the Contact Duplicates tool. Why?
There are a few reasons that contact records that you think (or know) are duplicates do not appear in Contact Duplicates.
- They do not meet exactly the criteria by which the tool matches contacts:
- Name (First and Last) - including spelling, capitalization, punctuation, etc.
- Last Name + Postal Code
- Phone
- Organization Name
- Not enough time has passed. The tool will match contacts, but it can take several hours for it to look through all your data (more on this below).
- The contacts were previously marked as "Not Duplicates". If this has been done, the tool will never identify these contacts as potential duplicates again.
- There are more than two duplicate profiles. The tool will only match two at a time, so once those have been addressed, it will find the other set of duplicates. This process continues for multiple duplicate records until all potential duplicates are matched.
Of course you can always merge contacts manually even if they don't appear in Contact Duplicates.
I already merged these two contact profiles! Why are they showing on the Contact Duplicates page again?
You probably didn't merge these two already -- just two that looked a lot (or exactly) like them. Often times it's possible to have more than two duplicate records, and once you have merged two, the Contact Duplicates tool will find the next set of duplicates. This process will repeat for as many duplicate records this person has, as long as these records meet the criteria (see above).
How often does the Contact Duplicates tool start fresh to look through my data?
- A data import using the Import Data tool
- Any "one-off" action which creates or updates a contact will queue up a worker to look for for duplicates. Certain bulk actions may not.
- Imports by certain integrations such as Eventbrite, Crowdrise, and QuickBooks.
- Your friendly Kindful Support team! If you feel like things might be stuck, feel free to send us an email -- we can get things going for you again.
How long will it take for the Contact Duplicates tool to look through all my contacts to find duplicates?
Why am I unable to convert one of these contacts from an organization record to a person record?
For Kindful to be able to convert an organization record to a person record, you must have the Name field be more than one word. For example, if you have a contact record named "Kindful", that will need to be altered to be the contact's name before being able to convert it to a person. Another common example is that an email address is set as the contact's name.
I'm finding that a lot of records are getting flagged as duplicates when it appears that the data matches exactly. This creates a lot of extra work in going in and resolving the duplicates. Can you explain why these duplicates are happening and how I can avoid them?
There are multiple ways for contacts to be imported into Kindful: via applications, the import tool, and a donor creating an account just to name a few. Each scenario handles potential duplicates in a different way. Here are a few of those scenarios.
When Kindful automatically merges:
1. When a contact is added via a registration form or a new donation, Kindful will look at contacts already in the system and will match by email address only.
2. On certain imports (contacts only or transactions only), Kindful will match by all of the following: first name, last name, and email address (as exact matches).
3. Integrations like Mailchimp, Emma, or Eventbrite will match by email address.
4. Once a donor logs in to their account, they can verify ownership of an email address. Once this is done, any new contact that comes into Kindful will automatically merge into the right place. All of the other scenarios below would not apply; absolutely everything would merge by the email address.
When Kindful will NOT automatically merge:
1. Some integrations like QuickBooks need to set up their own ID system, so all new contacts are created each time they merge into Kindful for the first time.
2. The import type of all "New Contacts and Transactions" will always create all new contacts and will not merge with what is already in Kindful. If you have new transactions to add, but do not need to update contact information, use the "Transactions Only" type. In both scenarios, if there is no match by first name, last name, and email address, Kindful can still create a new contact.
Other Integrations
1. Other integrations like Zapier, Classy, or Qgiv
2. Square requires information to be input into a specific spot in Square, but then merges by first name, last name, and email address.
How long does it take for duplicates to be merged using the Contact Auto Merge feature?
The first auto merge will run within approximately 24 hours, and then once every 24 hours until or unless it is disabled.
What if I have marked two contacts as "Not Duplicates". If they would still be considered as duplicates, will the Auto Merge feature still merge them depending upon which Merge Strategy I choose?
No, they won't. If an admin user marks two contacts as "Not Duplicates", they will not be merged by the tool, even if they match the criteria to be merged. If changes are made to the contact (name, address, or email), the "Not Duplicates" flag is removed, and the two contacts would be considered for the Auto Merge again.
What happens if I disable the Contact Auto Merge feature while contacts are being merged?
The tool will finish its current merge, but it will not run any subsequent auto merges.
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