Use this when... the same family, parent, student, tutor, lead, or employee appears more than once and you need to clean up the records without losing important history.

Before you start... decide which record is the source of truth. Check linked sessions, invoices, payments, messages, reports, compliance notes, assignments, leads, and portal invitations before changing anything. Duplicate cleanup can affect many parts of the system, so move slowly.

Start with the People area when cleaning up duplicate parent, family, or student records.

Duplicates usually appear when a lead is converted twice, a parent uses a different email address, siblings are entered separately, a tutor is invited before their existing record is found, or data is imported from another system. Some duplicates are obvious. Others look similar but are genuinely different people.

Never merge or remove records based only on a matching name. Confirm contact details, family relationships, lessons, invoices, and message history before deciding.

Search for the name, email, phone number, student, and family. Open each possible duplicate in a separate tab or compare them carefully. Note the record that has the most complete current activity.

Expected outcome: you know which records are duplicates and which record should remain active.

Check each record for scheduled lessons, historical sessions, attendance, invoices, payments, credits, lesson reports, messages, leads, compliance notes, forms, and portal access. If important history exists on both records, do not delete anything until you know how that history will be preserved.

Always check invoices and balances before merging or archiving people records.

Where the app supports merging, follow the merge workflow and review the fields that will be kept. Where a manual cleanup is required, move future sessions, active assignments, current contact details, and open billing work to the chosen record before archiving or marking duplicates inactive.

Add a concise internal note explaining that a duplicate was cleaned up, which record remains active, and what was checked. Avoid copying unnecessary personal information into the note.

You cannot merge records: check whether the record type supports merging. If not, use an archive/inactive workflow and move active work carefully.

Invoices appear under both records: review open balances and ask a finance owner before making changes. Do not recreate invoices simply to move them.

Messages are split across records: leave a note on the active record that older communication exists elsewhere if the platform cannot merge message history.

After cleanup, search again for the person's name and email. Confirm there is one active record, upcoming sessions point to the right student or tutor, portal access uses the right email, and billing work is visible to the finance team.

Do not manually remove records that are needed for audit, finance, compliance, or safeguarding history. Old invoices, payment references, consent records, and safeguarding notes may need to remain even when a person record is archived or marked duplicate. If you are unsure, ask the owner of that workflow before editing.

Agree a search habit for the admin team. Before creating a family, tutor, or lead, search by email, phone, and student name. During lead conversion, check whether the family already exists. During tutor onboarding, check whether an old employee record should be reactivated instead of creating a new one.

If cleanup affects another team member, tell them what changed. This is especially important when a finance admin is chasing invoices, a tutor is preparing lessons, or a growth admin is following up a lead.

Ask another admin to sanity-check complicated merges, especially where billing, safeguarding, or tutor pay is involved.

After duplicate cleanup, review the family, student, tutor, lead, billing, and message views so your team can trust the remaining record during everyday operations.