Duplicate Detection & Handling

This article describes current PantrySoft measures for detecting and handling duplicate Clients (Households) and household members.

Definition

PantrySoft checks for duplications of the following information sets:  

• Household Member: (Identical) First Name + (Identical) Last Name 
• Client Address: (Identical) Street Address, Postal Code, and if applicable, Apt / Suite / Unit

Use-Cases: Here are some example pantry situations we hope this feature will help mitigate:

• Client walks in, and intake staff clicked New Client without checking if they're already in the system.
• Client walks in, was a part of a larger household receiving services from you, but now lives alone and wants to receive services as their own household.
• Client walks in, hasn't been to the pantry in a while, and forgot they had received services from you years ago. Now you'll have a continuous record of that person's involvement, despite the long pause in services.
  
  

Remaining Gaps: Finally, here are some situations the current duplication feature can't yet help mitigate:

• Client or Staff mistypes a first or last name (i.e., someone comes in twice, but is entered as a new client each time).
• Client uses a long variety of surnames (for instance, a client uses multiple-surname conventions, and pantry personnel fail to enter all of their surnames on forms)
• Client or staff formats an address differently (for instance, typing "street" one time and then typing "St." on an erroneously created duplicate record.

 Note: Online Portal Registrations have no duplication checks! PantrySoft does not prevent clients visiting the online portal from creating duplicate Client records for themselves. Once they've actually logged in, the system performs no further duplication checks. This is to prevent someone from "phishing"— i.e., hopping on their phone, logging into your online portal with a dummy record, and then typing in the names or addresses of their neighbors to see if they're enrolled in your program.

The portal does, however, recognize if a client is logging in with an email or username that is already in use. A notification pops up in the upper right corner of the screen. 

Solution: To mitigate the customers visiting your Online Portal and making a duplicate, brand new Client record for themselves, login to the dashboard as an admin and create an online login "Customer Record" for them. This gives you the option to send them an email inviting them to create their own password. If you need to repeat this process, simply delete their Customer Record and make another one for them (See Customer Logins - Manual Management and use the Option: Send Email to Set Password step).

Note: Existing/Persisting duplicate Clients?

Duplicate address/Member Report. Use PantrySoft's Duplication Report to detect duplicate Clients that slipped by our Duplication detection. 

Merge Tool. Unfortunately, at this time, PantrySoft does not feature a Client merging tool. Choose one of the Client records to keep, and delete the others. If this solution is intolerable, contact PantrySoft Support to discuss a customer workaround option. 

Automatic Duplicate Household Member Detection

This section will describe where and how PantrySoft detects duplicate household members being detected, as well as explaining your options for reacting to a found duplicate:

The three PantrySoft screens that check for Household Member duplicates
(Duplication Found Button Highlighted)

Duplicate combinations of First and Last Names are checked on the following screens:

• Kiosk Interface: Registration Page via New Client button
• Kiosk Interface: Registration Page via Edit Client button
• Dashboard Interface: New Client screen via New Client button
• Dashboard Interface: Household Member screen via New Household Member button
• Dashboard Interface: Household Member screen via Edit Household Member button
  
  

Upon detecting a Duplicate, PantrySoft will show the following Popup:

Duplicate Found Popup
Left Side: two identical First Name + Last Name combinations were found.
(Investigate by clicking one of the duplicates.)

Then you optionally investigate the duplicates. (Click on one of the found-duplicates on the left to see more information about the matching records PantrySoft found.)

Duplicate Found Popup: Investigation Panel
(Investigation panel appears on the right after clicking one of the found-duplicates on the left)

Finally, you choose an Action.

1. Standard Actions (you can always ignore this screen with the Ignore button)
   • Ignore Button. Upon detecting one or more existing duplicate household members, the User can always choose Ignore to ignore the duplicate record PantrySoft found. The popup will close, but a button will remain on the screen reminding them that a duplicate was found. Clicking the button/ notification will bring the Duplicate Found popup back up.
     
     
2. Investigation - Specific Actions (as the User clicks on found - duplicates, additional options are possible)
   • Move Button: If the household member duplicate is not a primary household member of their current Client (household), the User can click Move and the household member will be instantly transported to the Client record they're currently creating or editing.
     (In the example above, the duplicate member PantrySoft found was a primary member, so the option to Move that person to the current Client is disabled.)
   • Open Button: The User can abandon their current operation (presumably because they have now discovered there's already a record of this person in the system), and simply go visit the existing Client record belonging to the real person in question.
     
     

Automatic Duplicate Address Detection

This section will describe where and how PantrySoft detects duplicate Client Addresses, as well as explaining your options for reacting to a found-duplicate:

Duplicate combinations of First and Last Names are checked on the following screens:

• Kiosk Interface: Registration Page via New Client button
• Kiosk Interface: Registration Page via Edit Client button
• Dashboard Interface: New Client screen via New Client button
• Dashboard Interface: Address Edit screen via Edit Address button
  
  

Upon finding an exact match:

• PantrySoft shows the following popup:
  
  
• At this point, the User has to perform their own investigation to find the Client record with a matching address already in the system using one of the following methods:
• Enter the street name or the zip code into the search bar on the main dashboard screen.
• Enter the street name or the zip code into the Browse Clients search bar (PantrySoft->Browse Clients)