Sporty automatically applies person-matching logic when people complete registration forms. The Sporty platform will compare fields of personal information such as name, date of birth and contact information to decide if a match exists for an existing person in your database. If so, the registration will update to that existing person instead of creating a new (duplicate) person in your database.
If your organisation is a school or club, all registration forms relating to one person with your organisation will be stored against that one person in your SuperCRM view.
When an organisation is a governing body, such as a softball association, netball centre or football federation, all registrations from all clubs and schools affiliated with your organisation will appear against one single person in your SuperCRM view.
Sporty must be 100% sure
It is better to be cautious and for Sporty not to automatically match and merge records unless it is 100% certain because:
- Risk of Data Loss: If registrations from two different people are incorrectly merged into one record, information unique to each individual could be lost or overwritten (e.g., contact details, registration history, payments).
- Privacy and Compliance: Combining records of two people who are not the same may result in sharing or displaying personal data to the wrong person, breaching privacy laws and Sporty's data protection policies.
- Membership Integrity: People might share similar names, birthdays, or even contact details (e.g., family members), but still be distinct individuals needing separate records in your system.
- Registration & Communication Errors: Incorrect merges can result in loss of eligibility for registrations, confusion for team selections, or sending communications to the wrong people.
- Reversal Difficulty: Once records are merged, it can be very difficult or even impossible to separate them correctly again, risking permanent data integrity issues.
As a result, the rules used by Sporty are strict and only automatically perform a match if the system is 100% sure of a match. Sporty then gives administrators the power to review potential duplicates and confirm merges manually, ensuring that only true duplicates are combined and all critical data is preserved and accurate.
Updating personal information
The information that you hold for a person can be updated in two ways:
- New registration form completed or registration form edited
- Person profile updated in SuperCRM
Editing/submitting a new registration form
A person's contact/personal details on SuperCRM is updated with the latest information when the person either submits a new registration form for your organisation, or uses the magic link in their email to edit an existing registration, or if you as an administrator, open and edit their registration form on their behalf in SuperCRM
If the recently submitted registration is for a Superform, and therefore belongs to a governing body (e.g., softball, netball etc.), all related organisations in your sporting code will also receive the updated information for that person.
Any previously submitted registration forms will not be updated with this new contact/personal information, those registration forms will contain the information submitted when the registration form was originally submitted or subsequently edited. This means if you invite the person to re-register, the invitation will be sent to the email address on the registration form, and the contact/personal information displayed on the form will be the information previously submitted on that form.
Edit person in SuperCRM
When you edit a person in SuperCRM, this will also update all “current” registration forms at your organisation with this updated contact/personal information. This means your “in-use” registration forms all have the current contact information for the person. “Current” forms are all registration forms that have:
- no season/year defined,
- are for this season/year,
- are for last season/year, when a new form has opened for this season/year, but the person hasn’t registered to the new season yet.
If the form is a Superform, and therefore belongs to a governing body (e.g. softball, netball etc.), all related organisations in your sporting code will also receive this contact/personal information update for that person.
If you do not normally have access to update a field on a form (e.g. your governing body has restricted you from changing a person’s gender), the change made on the person in SuperCRM will not update the registration form, and subsequently your governing body will not be updated with this change. However, all form fields that you do have access to update will be updated.
Restrictions on editing people
Clubs and schools are unable to edit a Person’s first name, last name or date of birth. If these fields need to be updated, please contact your governing body or support@sportsground.com.
People that are not automatically matched
Sometimes there are not enough matching identifiable fields that allow Sporty to confirm a positive match.
Same First Name, Last Name, Preferred Name, Email and Date of Birth
If a person has the same first, last name, preferred name and date of birth as another person in your database but other contact information differs, Sporty will populate this person as a “Likely Match”, allowing you to manually link or merge these people together in Sporty (confirming that the registrations belong to the same person).
It is important to note that if a person is required to be manually linked, they would not have been identified as requiring a transfer if your sport has a transfer requirement. Please contact support@sportsground.com if you manually link a person that now has two active registrations for the season, which should have initiated a transfer.
For help managing duplicate person records, click here.
Different First Name, Last Name, Preferred Name, Email or Date of Birth
If a person completed a registration form incorrectly, please refer to this support article.