Duplicate Family Accounts – Merge Accounts

Background

There may be cases where you end up with two occurrences of the same family account, for example, Smith (account 1) and Smith (account 2). This could happen for a variety of reasons, but one common situation is when a family has been away for a while and then returns, they are mistakenly added a second time, as a new account, rather than having their original account reactivated. Sometimes this is due to the original account being marked “hidden”, so that it’s not obvious they are already in the system.

The proper way to handle a returning family is to make them visible again by un-hiding them. See: How do I make a family hidden or un-hide them?

How to Handle Duplicate Families

1. People within the accounts (parents, children, pickup people) can be merged if they were mistakenly entered twice as two separate people, such as Jane Smith (1) and Jane Smith (2). If you’re using the Attendance Tracker, keep the person that has registered to check in children. For example, if Jane Smith (2) has registered her fingerprint for check-in purposes, keep Jane (2) as the Primary Person and choose Jane (1) as the Duplicate. See: Remove duplicate people.

2. Although the accounts themselves can’t actually be merged, one can be hidden or, in some cases, deleted.

   1. If one of the accounts does not have any transactions on the Ledger Card, then you can delete that account by removing first the children and then the account itself. See: Remove/delete a family.
   2. If both accounts have ledger transactions, mark one as hidden. If they both show a balance due, post a miscellaneous credit to zero out the balance of the hidden account and a miscellaneous charge to transfer that balance to the visible (active) account.

3. If you are unsure how to handle your particular situation, contact Tech Support for advice.