Duplicates happen, the same person gets entered twice, or an online gift creates a second record. When that happens, merge the records so all the history lives in one place instead of being split.
When you create a new contact, donor, client, organization, or volunteer, CoolFocus checks what you've typed against existing records as you fill out the form. If it finds a likely match on email, phone, or name, a Possible existing match panel appears above the form.
• Each match shows the person's name, record number, and any roles they already have (Donor, Client, Volunteer, and so on), plus the reason it matched.
• If the match is missing the role you're creating, click the suggested action (for example Add Donor) to add that role to the existing record instead of creating a new one.
• Click Open to go straight to the existing record.
• If none of the matches are right, click Create anyway to dismiss the panel and continue creating the new record.
This only surfaces records you have permission to view. A record you can't access never appears as a suggested match.
When a client books an appointment or registers for a class online, CoolFocus checks their email, phone, and name/date of birth against your existing clients before creating a new one, including contact information that hasn't fully synced between older and newer parts of the platform yet. See From Booking to Visit: How Records Flow for how that matching works.
When several existing records clearly belong to the same person, for example the same email with matching first name, last name, and date of birth on every one of them, CoolFocus attaches the booking to whichever record was most recently active instead of adding yet another duplicate. If the match is ever weak or ambiguous, CoolFocus still creates a new client instead of guessing, so you may still see a duplicate to merge, use the steps below.
For duplicates that already exist, open a list view for Contacts, Organizations, Donors, Clients, Volunteers, Staff, Churches, or Gap Ministries, and use the Duplicate Finder from the list's options menu.
• Choose which fields to match on: Email, Phone, and/or Name.
• Click Find duplicates. CoolFocus groups matching records together and shows the reason and confidence for each group (Email matches rank highest, then Phone, then Name).
• From a group, click Open on any record to review it, or merge two records directly if the entity type supports merging.
Like the create-time suggestions, Duplicate Finder only shows records you can view. It won't reveal a record that's hidden from you by a data access rule.
Merging is a record action. Open one of the duplicate records, open its actions menu, and choose Merge. You'll pick the other record to combine it with, review the two side by side, and confirm.
• Keep the record that has the best current information, the other record merges into it.
• The merge combines the history so nothing is lost: gifts, requests, visits, conversations, notes, tasks, and other related records move onto the surviving record.
• CoolFocus deletes the record you merged away once the merge finishes. Only the surviving record remains in list views and search results.
• You can merge like records: contact with contact, donor with donor, client with client, organization with organization.
• Templates and system records can't be merged, merge is for people and organizations, not email/document templates.
If both records hold the same staff position (for example, two team members are both qualified as Ultrasound Tech), the merge combines that qualification onto the surviving record instead of leaving duplicate entries behind.
• CoolFocus keeps the earliest qualified date between the two.
• If either record's qualification has no expiration date, the merged qualification stays non-expiring.
• Notes from both qualifications are combined onto the surviving record.
• Any position held only by the record being merged away is added to the survivor.
If the merge still can't resolve a conflict, CoolFocus stops and shows a clear error message instead of failing partway through.
Double-check the surviving record: confirm the contact details are the ones you want to keep, and that the combined history looks right. Merging can't be undone, so review before you confirm.
If the merged-away record still shows up in a list after you merge, refresh the page. The record itself is deleted; a stale cached list is the only thing that would cause it to remain.
• Contacts and Organizations
• CoolFocus Glossary
• From Booking to Visit: How Records Flow
