PSFS Family Directory - Family List: How to merge duplicate family records

How to merge duplicate family records

The following caveats must be in place to use this feature:

This article is specifically written to show how to merge duplicate family records. See the following article to learn how to merge duplicate member records.
First, if you are under a diocese who uses the ParishSOFT diocesan suite, the diocese must turn this feature on for your church. Otherwise, that permission is turned off by default.
In addition to that permission, each church administrator must give this permission to the staff responsible for merging duplicate records (Administration → Manage Staff).
Also, both families must be owned (registered) to the parish or the diocese will need to do the merge.

Note: if both family records have giving history, merging will not lose any giving history from either record.

Gather the family information and identify the duplicates.
Note the family DUIDs and identify which one is going to be the master family DUID. See below.
Go to the Merge Families page under the Administration Tab and enter the Family DUIDs.
Sometimes the duplicate family will only have the parents or some of the members of the family. You will just select to merge those members into their master member records.
However, sometimes you will see that there are more members showing in the merge screen than in the family details screen (see below). This should not cause alarm, it just means that the parish has chosen to delete those members, possibly because they are adult children and don't live with their parents (as shown below):
While the Member Details tab (above) shows only four members, the Merge Family Records (below) shows five. The fifth record was likely deleted from the Member Details after moving into their own household. It can be ignored.
Once you have inserted the DUIDs into the correct fields (in Step 3), you will need to select which member records to merge each duplicate member record into in the What to Do fields:
If there is another duplicate family, merge the second duplicate at the same time. Just enter the second duplicate family DUID in the 'Additional Duplicate Family DUID' field:
You will again need to select which member records you are merging together and select 'Submit to Queue':
- Note: if your diocese has the sacramental conflicts feature, these conflicts must be resolved before clicking Submit to Queue.
Click OK when you receive the following message:
Go to the Merge Family Queue option to see the pending Merge records, see images below:
These records will be merged overnight.