Overview

Site Administrators regularly run into the same family appearing more than once in TeamSideline — mom registered one child, dad registered the other, or a customer forgot which email they used last season. The fix is not always a merge. This article walks through the full workflow: confirm the duplicate is real, choose the right fix (merge, add a parent, add to a Team Site roster, delete, or deactivate), perform the merge safely, and escalate correctly if a merge goes wrong.

Merges cannot be undone from the admin screens. Reading this before you click Submit will save a support ticket.

Step 1: Confirm a duplicate account genuinely exists

Two records with different email addresses are not automatically duplicates. Before doing anything, check:

• Is it the same person, or two people in the same household? Two parents with two logins is a household/access problem, not a duplicate-person problem. See Step 2.
• Is it the same child listed on both parents' accounts? This is a true duplicate member and is the usual reason for merging.
• Did the person register once as a Coach/Volunteer and later as a Parent? That creates two customer accounts for one human being — a true duplicate.
• Is one of the records hidden? If you get the error "This email address is already in use by one of your existing accounts…" but searching for that email returns nothing, the other record is likely deactivated. In Customers > Account Management > Search, click Show more fields and select Include inactive to surface it.
• Is one of them an Admin account rather than a customer account? An admin login and a customer account for the same person are different objects and are not merged with the Merge Accounts tool.

Symptoms that usually mean a duplicate: a parent says they cannot see their child's Team Site, roster, or schedule even though the child is rostered; a registration history that is missing last season's enrollments; or the same child's name appearing twice in search results.

Step 2: Decide the right fix — merge vs. add the other parent

This is the most common point of confusion. Use the table of situations below.

• Same person, two accounts (different emails) → Merge. Consolidates enrollment history under one login.
• Two parents, each with their own account, and the family is willing to share one login → Merge. Both parents end up in one household, each child is listed once, and both parents keep ongoing access to all Team Sites without re-adding anyone each season.
• Both parents need access but should not share an account (for example, separated or divorced families) → Do not merge. Add the second parent to the account, or add them to the Team Site roster.
  • Add Parent (admin): Go to Customers > Account Management > Search, click the registering customer's name, and on the Account Overview click Add Parent. Complete the required fields and click Add. The added parent gets their own login to that account and can see the children's information. (A customer can do this themselves from the User Site Map: My Account > Members > Add Parent.)
  • Team Site roster only (most limited): Go to Programs > Manage Programs, select the Program, click the Team Sites tab, open the correct Team Site, go to the Roster tab, click Add to Roster, choose Parent of and link the parent to their player. This gives that team's schedule, chat, and communications only — it does not give access to the enrolling parent's account or enrollment history, and it must be repeated for every new Team Site and every new season.
• A stray account with no enrollments and no purchases → Delete. On the Account Overview, click Delete. If the customer has any enrollment or purchase, the system will not allow deletion.
• A stray account that has history and cannot be deleted → Deactivate. On the Account Overview tab, click Account Settings, check "Yes, deactivate this account," and Save. The balance must be zero or the option is greyed out. Deactivated accounts stop appearing in customer searches, communications, and the Account Information report.
• Duplicates across two different organizations/sites → Not a merge. Merge Accounts only works when the same individual created two accounts within the same site. If a family belongs to several organizations, each site's accounts are handled separately.

Step 3: What a merge does and does not preserve

• The "To" account wins. The account you are merging to takes precedence; conflicting data from the "From" account is overwritten with the "To" account data. Choose the account the family wants to keep logging in with as the To account.
• Enrollment/registration history is carried over and consolidated under the surviving account, along with the family relationships.
• Team Site access follows the merged account, so both parents in the merged household can reach all of the family's Team Sites going forward.
• Member identity depends entirely on how you map members. If you map two different children to each other, the system treats them as one person: one child's record disappears and their enrollments are reassigned to the other child. This is the single most common merge mistake.
• A merge cannot be undone from the admin screens. Unwinding one requires a data correction by TeamSideline Support.

Step 4: Perform the merge

Merging Accounts requires the Advanced Registrar role.

1. Go to Customers > Account Management > Search and click Merge Accounts.
2. Step 1 (From): Enter the name of the account that will be merged out — normally the newer account or the one with less complete history — click Search, then click the select icon next to the correct customer.
3. Step 2 (To): Enter the name of the account that should remain as the primary account going forward, click Search, then click the select icon.
4. Map Members: For each person listed under From Account Member, use the Merge To column to select the matching person in the surviving account.
   • Select a name only when the two records are genuinely the same person (for example, the same child listed on both parents' accounts).
   • Select New when that person does not already exist on the "To" account (for example, the second parent, or a sibling who was only ever on the "From" account). Selecting New creates them on the surviving account.
   • Do not select New for someone who is already on the "To" account — that is what creates a second copy of the same child.
5. Review every row before submitting. Confirm each parent and each child is mapped exactly once and to the right person.
6. Click Submit.

Step 5: Verify after the merge

1. Open the surviving account and confirm every family member is present — and present only once.
2. Open the Enrollments page for the account and confirm each enrollment is attached to the correct person, not rolled up under one sibling.
3. Confirm the email address the family expects to log in with is on the account.
4. Tell the family to sign out and sign back in to see the change.
5. Spot-check Team Site visibility for at least one child.

If the merge went wrong

If a member disappeared or enrollments moved to the wrong child, do not attempt to patch it by re-adding people manually — that usually compounds the problem. Open a ticket with TeamSideline Support and include:

• Your site name / URL.
• The names (and account ids if you have them) of the "From" and "To" accounts.
• Exactly which member is missing and which enrollments should be moved back to them (program, division, and team name).
• The email address the restored member should use.
• The missing member's date of birth — restored member records may come back without a DOB, and you will need it to finish the account.

If you are unsure how to map a complicated family (multiple children on both accounts, a parent who is also a coach or board member), Support is happy to run the merge for you rather than risk lost data. Send the two email addresses and the desired primary account.

Preventing duplicates

• Encourage customers to use the "forgot password" flow instead of creating a new account when they cannot remember their login.
• When a customer says a second parent needs access, ask first whether they want to share one account — that answer determines merge vs. Add Parent.
• Run the Account Information report from Reports > Report Exports and sort by last name or email to spot duplicates in bulk. There is no bulk "remove all duplicates" tool; each pair is handled individually.