Lesson 9.2 – Identifying and Removing Duplicates

Welcome to Lesson 9.2! Maintaining a clean database is essential for accurate donor tracking, reporting, and communication. Over time, duplicate constituent names or shared email addresses can easily slip into your system. FastFund Online provides specific utilities to actively scan your database and identify these potential duplicates so you can resolve them.

In this lesson, we will explore why unique data is so important, how to generate duplicate reports, and how to differentiate between true duplicates and shared entity records.

1. The Importance of Unique Emails

While having a duplicate donor name can cause confusion or duplicate mailings, duplicate email addresses can actually cause financial data errors.

FastFund Online relies heavily on Constituent Email addresses to match donors when you are importing transactions. This is especially true if you use the Batch Processing import tool or if you use the EFT Corporation API for automatic website donation imports. If two different constituents in your database share the exact same email address, there is a significant chance that an imported online donation will be automatically credited to the incorrect donor. Therefore, identifying and resolving duplicate emails is a highly recommended best practice.

2. Generating a Duplicate Names Report

FastFund uses a built-in similarity algorithm to scan all existing entities and find names that might be potential duplicates.

Steps to Generate the Report:

1. Navigate to Utilities on the Main Menu, and under the DATA MANAGEMENT section, select Duplicate Names.
2. Click the GENERATE REPORT button.
3. Because scanning the entire database can take several minutes to complete, FastFund does not make you wait on the screen; it queues the request and processes it offline in the background.
4. Once the processing is complete, the system will automatically email the Duplicate Names report to you as a CSV file.

3. Generating a Duplicate Emails List

Unlike the names report which runs offline, the duplicate emails utility instantly displays its results on your screen.

Steps to View Duplicate Emails:

1. Navigate to Utilities > Duplicate Emails.
2. The screen will display a list of all entities that share an email address.
3. The list includes the Entity ID, Email, Name, and the Entity Types (e.g., Constituent, Vendor, Client, Employee).

4. Shared Entities vs. True Duplicates

When reviewing the Duplicate Emails list, you must understand how FastFund structures its database. Because FastFund shares names across Accounting, Fundraising, and Payroll, a single person might be tagged as multiple entity types.

• Shared Entities (Not Duplicates): If you see a name on the list where the Entity ID is exactly the same, but it has multiple “Types” listed (e.g., Constituent, Other, Vendor), these are not considered duplicate emails. This simply means one person plays multiple roles in your organization.
• True Duplicates: True duplicates occur when the Entity IDs are different, but the Email address is the exact same. These are the records that should be considered candidates for editing or merging.

If you find an email that needs to be corrected, you can click directly on the blue Entity Type link in the list to immediately open the record and change the email address. (Note: If the records are indeed duplicates of the same person, you will learn how to combine them in Lesson 9.3: Merging Constituent Records).