Sometimes you need to remove a record entirely - a client or contact created by mistake, or leftover training data. CoolFocus lets you delete records, and it protects your history while doing it.
When you delete a person (client, donor, contact), CoolFocus doesn't shred the data - it marks the record deleted and hides it from your lists. The connected history (notes, visits, contributions, pledges) is preserved, not destroyed. That keeps your reporting intact and means a record removed by mistake can be recovered.
Open the record.
Open the Actions menu in the top-right.
Choose Delete.
Confirm by typing delete <record type> when prompted - for example delete client.
If you don't see a Delete option, that record type doesn't allow deletion, or your permissions don't include delete - check with an administrator.
Donor, Client, and Volunteer lists include a To Be Deleted checkbox field, separate from the soft-delete status above. It's a flag some records carry from earlier cleanup work or an import, marking them as candidates for removal. Checking this box on a record does not delete it or hide it from lists by itself - it's only useful once you filter or segment on it.
You can filter or build a saved segment on this field to gather cleanup candidates before you review and delete them:
Open the Donors, Clients, or Volunteers list.
Add a filter on To Be Deleted and choose is true.
Review the results, then delete the records that are genuinely no longer needed. See Finding Records with Filters and Saving & Sharing Segments for more on building and saving filters.
Deleting isn't always what you want. One person can be a client and a donor and a volunteer on a single shared record. If you only want to take someone off your client list without losing them as a donor, don't delete - open the record and uncheck the "Client" box instead. They stay in CoolFocus with all their other history; they simply no longer appear as a client.
Use Delete for genuine mistakes and test data. Uncheck the role when the person is real but shouldn't be in that particular list.
If two records are the same person, don't delete one - merge them so the history combines onto a single record. See Merging Duplicate Records.
