Managing duplicate memberships can be a hassle. To make things easier, Join It includes smart features to help prevent duplicate records and provides tools to merge them when they do occur.

Duplicate records most commonly happen when a member tries to renew an existing membership but accidentally creates a new one instead. Join It uses several safeguards to reduce this risk:

Renewal Emails: Members receive system-generated renewal emails containing a unique renewal link. When clicked, this link takes the member directly to their current membership checkout - avoiding the creation of a new record.

Renewal 'Call To Actions': Join It includes clear calls-to-action within the member portal that guide users to renew their current membership. These actions are tied to the member’s existing record and help ensure renewals don’t create duplicates.

Duplicate Warnings at Checkout: If someone tries to purchase a membership using an email already in the system, Join It displays a warning to help prevent the creation of a duplicate.

Description of screenshot: Displaying the 'Duplicate Membership' notification

Even with preventive measures, duplicates can occasionally occur - especially if a member bypasses prompts or uses a different email. Join It makes it easy to resolve these with both automatic and manual merging tools.

Join It will automatically merge two records when they meet specific criteria.

​Default Auto-Merge Rule:
If one membership has a Prospective status and the other has an Active status and both share the same email address - Join It will automatically combine them into a single record.

Learn more about automatic merge rules

If automatic merging doesn’t apply, you can easily merge records yourself using the Manual Merge Tool within Join It. This tool walks you through selecting which data to keep.
​Learn how to manually merge duplicate records

Description of screenshot: Displaying where to manually Merge a record

Yes, it can happen if a member creates a new record instead of renewing their existing one. Especially if they bypass the system prompts to log in or use their renewal link. However, the built-in prevention features are designed to minimize this as much as possible.

Yes. If your bulk import file contains multiple rows for the same individual - for example, if a member appears more than once - Join It will create a separate membership record for each entry. To avoid this, we recommend reviewing and deduplicating your spreadsheet before importing.