Manage Memberships Part VII: Merge Duplicate Memberships

Manage Memberships Part VII: Merge Duplicate Memberships

1. On occasion, you may end up with two memberships on a contact's record. This may happen when the contact goes online and purchases a new membership instead of renewing their existing membership or when, either online or by a staff person doing direct entry, a new membership is purchased instead of using the "change" function to switch to a different membership level. In all of these instances, the second membership is an error and needs to be removed and the older membership brought up to date.
2. There is no "merge membership" function in Fundly CRM. The process of removing the second/erroneous membership and updating the older one is a manual process.
3. In this example, Terri Bruce was had an Individual Membership in 2018. Part way through her membership year, she upgraded to a Bronze Level membership. But instead of using the "change" button to upgrade, whoever entered this membership purchased a new one. Then, in March, someone renewed her Bronze Level membership by purchasing a new membership, instead of renewing it. What a mess! The duplicate records needs to be cleaned up so it doesn't create reporting issues for us and so that we have the entire history of Terri's membership with Monty Crisco Arts Center in one thread.

   

4. To begin, go to the Invoices, find the invoice(s) for the duplicate/second/newer transaction(s) and delete it. In this case, we need to delete two invoices - one for the first Bronze Level membership and one for the second Bronze Level membership. Be sure to leave/not erase the invoice for the original/earliest membership and any renewals on that thread. Those are good/valid transactions that we want to keep. Please Note: Prior to deleting the invoices, be sure to write down the dates of the transaction(s) you are deleting so you can recreate the history accurately.

   

5. After deleting the invoices, verify you now have just one membership/one membership thread on the contact's record/verify that the duplicate membership(s) is/are gone.

   

6. Then, go to either the All page of Membership widget on View Contact or to Manage Memberships and Renew or Change the remaining/older membership from there. See our tutorials on how to renew or change/upgrade/downgrade a membership for more information.
   

   

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7. In this case, we need to first upgrade Terri to a Bronze Membership, then renew that membership. The date of the upgrade (from our deleted invoice) was 3/1/2019, so that it what we will use. In this case, because we're upgrading, we need to set the Registration Date (Membership Start Date) and Transaction Dates both to be 3/1/2019.
   

   

8. If the contact had paid for the newer/erroneous membership, when you deleted the invoice, that payment should have become a credit on the contact's account. You can apply that payment/credit to the cost of the renewal/change when you get to the payment screen.

   

9. We see on the record now there is one membership still, but it's been upgraded to Bronze Level (as it should be).

   

10. After upgrading/changing her membership level, we now need to renew her membership. Again, we will use the original transaction date from the invoice we deleted - in this case, she renewed on 3/1/2020. However, because this is a renewal, the start date of the membership period for the current year cannot be prior to the expiration of the current membership term/year. The current membership expires on 3/2/2020. Terri is renewing one day early, in March. So we backdate the transaction date, but we leave the Renew Date (membership start date) as 3/2/2020. See our tutorial on renewing memberships for more information.
    

    

11. Now we can see that her membership is current/up to date, and there is only one membership thread. If we click on View History, we see the entire history in one place. This membership is now correct and the duplicate has been fixed.