It is not recommended to delete people because when a profile is deleted, all history associated with that person in every Planning Center product is also deleted, including payment information, scheduling, and attendance data.
If the profile represents a real person who has moved away, left your church, was fired, or doesn't attend your church for any other reason, you should set that profile to inactive.
Only delete profiles that are test data or created by accident.
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If the profile is duplicated, you can merge the two profiles, saving any information input into either profile.
If a person no longer attends your church, set their profile to inactive. If the person has administrative permissions in any Planning Center product, review the Staff Transition article before setting their profile to inactive.
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What happens if a person is set to inactive?
People is the hub for all profile information. When a person is set to inactive in People, the following occurs:
General
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Their administrative access will be removed in every product.
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In Calendar, you must remove the person, or they will show on the People list with (Inactive) next to their name.
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They can no longer log in, even if they reset their password.
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Event attendance and registration will stay in the corresponding products.
People
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If they are the only person with access to certain lists, those lists will remain in the account, but they will no longer sync to Mailchimp.
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Organization administrators can view lists and workflows that no longer have a manager under the Unassigned lists and Unassigned workflows views on the main Lists and Workflows pages. Select a list or workflow to add yourself as a manager.
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If a member requests that their personal information be deleted, but your church needs to retain their profile due to donation or attendance records, an organization administrator can permanently delete email addresses, phone numbers, or physical addresses from the person's Activity tab by hovering over the data to reveal the delete icon.
Church Center
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They will lose access to the Directory, and their listing will be removed.
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If they were logged out of Church Center, logging back in will reactivate their profile.
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If they were logged into Church Center when inactivated, any actions, including registering for a signup, checking into an event, joining a group, or donating, will reactivate their profile.
Groups
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They will be removed from any groups they are in.
Services
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They will be declined for future plans.
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They will be removed from all teams.
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They will be removed as a team leader.
Giving
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Donation history will remain in Giving.
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Payment methods will remain in their donor profile.
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Recurring donations will continue. When the next donation occurs, the person will be reactivated.
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There is one exception: when a profile with recurring donations is marked as Deceased, the recurring donations are set to On Hold.
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They will still be sent a donation statement if they gave in the statement time frame.
If an inactive person completes any action in Church Center (except checking someone else in), their profile will be reactivated.
To set a person's profile to inactive, select Set inactive from the Actions dropdown menu.
Choose the reason for inactivating the profile and the inactivation date. Clear the person's membership type if needed.
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Use the dropdown to choose the reason for inactivation. The options for Reason can be customized to your church language or to add more reason options.
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Select today's date or add a different date.
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Clear the person's membership status. By checking this box, you ensure that if this profile is reactivated, the person will not be included in lists based on membership type, and they will not have access to membership-type only pages in Church Center. This box is unchecked by default.
To reactivate an inactive profile, select Reactivate from the Actions dropdown.
If you reactivate someone's profile, they will not automatically obtain their previous permissions in other products. They must be re-added as event managers, viewers, counters, etc.
Danger
Some important things to remember when deleting a profile:
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Donations associated with this profile will no longer be connected to a donor. Giving administrators can reassign these abandoned donations to another profile.
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Attendance history will remain in a specific product, such as Registrations or Check-Ins, for reporting purposes, but a profile will not be attached to the history.
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Because deleting profiles is so destructive, it can only be done by an organization administrator.
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This cannot be undone. There is no going back. If that gives you the slightest bit of concern, you should either set the profile to inactive or merge it with another.
If you are confident that you want to delete the profile because they are not a real person, and their data is not real, an organization administrator can select Delete Profile from the Actions dropdown.
There's no way to delete multiple people simultaneously unless they were imported. You can undo the import within 48 hours from when you imported it.