Noctern proposes possible duplicate patrons for you to review — it never merges anything automatically. You decide which records, if any, are actually the same person.
Before you start
Venue Admin or Super Admin.
Reviewing candidates
Go to AdminVenuesPatronsDuplicates.
Candidate groups are flagged by one of four signals, shown as a badge on each group:
- Same name — an exact first + last name match.
- Shared email — two patrons with the same email address.
- Name + address — the same last name, the same street address, and the same first-name initial. (Couples living at the same address with different first initials are deliberately not flagged by this signal.)
- Nickname match — a common nickname variant of the same name (Bob/Robert, and similar).
Use the Open / Snoozed / Resolved tabs, the search box, or a signal chip to find a group.
For each group, choose Merge…, Keep separate (dismisses the pairing for good), or Snooze 30d (revisit later).
If you've just finished an import or a batch of manual entries, click Recompute candidates to refresh the list.
Merging
Click Merge… on a group. Pick which patron is the survivor and which will be merged away.
For each conflicting field (name, email, phone, address), choose which record's value wins. Tags are combined from both records, and every external system id is kept on the survivor — nothing is dropped.
Review the dry-run plan — it lists exactly how many purchases, donations, pledges, recurring gifts, interactions, and other records will move to the survivor before anything happens.
Click Confirm — merge into [survivor's name].
Once merged, the losing patron's page redirects visitors to the survivor automatically, and every purchase, gift, pledge, and interaction re-points to the survivor. Giving and ticket rollups recompute afterward.
If a merge fails partway through (a network blip, for example), reopening it shows a Resume merge button — it's safe to resume, since each step only runs once.
Watch out
A merge is not reversible by default. Undo-within-30-days exists as a feature, but it isn't a self-serve setting — Noctern support turns it on for your venue if you want it.
- Open the demo venue's duplicate review queue and find the "Shared email" group.
- Open the merge dialog and check the dry-run counts before confirming anything.
- Practice Keep separate on a group you don't intend to merge — confirm it drops out of the Open tab.