How to merge spouse records without soft credit mess

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Julie Hiland
Julie Hiland ✭
Ancient Membership Facilitator 1 Name Dropper Photogenic
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussion
We have a handful of instances in our database where each spouse "unecessarily" has a separate record, and there is a very long gift history with soft credits going both ways.  We would like to merge them together. But I have found that when I merge spouse records, and gifts from one spouse record have been automatically soft-crediting the other spouse, the gifts on the final merged record are mostly soft-credited to themselves. How do I avoid this, but also make sure that I catch gifts that have been soft-credited to the spouse from other entities (donor-advised fund, etc.)??
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  • Jen Claudy
    Jen Claudy ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic
    I thought I had done this very thing before and the soft-credits disappeared once the record was deleted.  But I just did a test, and that's not what happens.  Apparently, once you merge the gifts, you must go in and delete the Soft Credit piece of the Gift Record...manually.  I looked for Global Change or Global Delete options, but there aren't any.  If you have a really high volume, you could try using Import to export the data, scrub it, and Import it back.  But I don't know how (or if) it will work, so test with a couple of dummy records (or in the Sample Database, if you have access to one) first.



    If it's less than 250, I'd probably just settle down with my laptop, turn on the TV, and go thru them manually while watching a movie.  And if you want some tips & tricks on making that manual process go as efficiently as possible, ask!  I have several, and I would guess that there will be more from others in the Community.



    Maybe it's an unintended consequence or erroneous change in a recent upgrade?  I'm pretty sure I've done this before and not had the mess of SC to clean...hmm.
  • Nicole S
    Nicole S ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 3 Name Dropper Photogenic
    You canchoose to ignore the soft credits -


    How to not merge soft credits when merging constituents ... 3. Select Gifts under Information to be merged ... 4. Mark the Exclude soft credits when merging gifts option



    But this is an all or nothing option.  If you have constituents other than the spouse being merged in to they will also be ignored.

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