Usually contacts are created by and owned by an organisation. This gives the organisation full control over that contact profile. However, in more complex scenarios, some contacts are only visible when one organisation shares a contact with another.

These contacts are known as 'shared contacts'. Typically these contacts are shared down from a parent organisation to a child organisation, but can also be shared up. For example, a national organisation hosts and coordinates member registrations and then shares registered members down to state and local organisations.

Limitations of shared contacts

Due to the limitations of shared contacts, TidyHQ will create 'duplicate' contacts in cases where it would normally create contacts and automatically merge profiles or update existing ones. Often this doesn't cause major issues, but can create some challenges when using bulk email communications so special care to group contacts and keep them organised should be taken.

Common cases where duplicates would be created are grouped by feature below:

Events

Duplicates are created when a shared contact exists and a person registers or purchases a ticket to an Event.

Memberships

When a person registers for membership and their details match an existing shared contact, a duplicate profile will be created.

Shop

When a purchase is made, TidyHQ creates the order and contact profile for the person making the purchase. If a shared contact with the same details already exists, a duplicate will be created.

Other cases to consider:

Admins

Even if an admin has a shared contact profile in your organisation. They will be created as a duplicate contact when they are invited to manage TidyHQ and get access to the admin dashboard.

Meetings

Shared contacts cannot be invited to meetings, only admins can be invited, so when sending invites, you will be inviting the 'non-shared' contact.

Communicate

When running an organisation with shared contacts, duplicates a common. Special care should be taken when sending many emails out at once so you're not doubling up and sending multiple emails to the same person. It's possible to do this via some care smart group creation and filtering.

Finances & Invoices

Invoices cannot sent to shared contacts, so to raise an invoice using TidyHQ you'll need to send the invoice to a contact that organisation has created.