Automated Duplicate Prevention
With the growing capabilities of technology, it seems only logical to implement a system that proactively prevents duplicate entries. This feature would remove the need for manual checks, saving valuable time and reducing the risk of errors. For teams that are already time-poor, adding a manual task to address duplicates feels unnecessary when it could be entirely avoided with automation.
Beyond the operational benefits, this addition would also strengthen Membes' position in the market, as many competitors appear to have already adopted similar functionality. Having such a feature could enhance the platform's appeal and user satisfaction.
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29 Aug, '25
Membes AdminHighlighted comment
<<<< continued from above
The current processes for managing and merging duplicates has been designed to make this task as simple and time efficient as possible and we hope well worth the benefit of maximising new member joins and general membership growth.
We have had internal discussions about Oscars suggestion, and although it does seem like a good balance, when assessing the user experience closely it could cause the user confusion at best, or a stall to joining that does not start again for some users, potentially resulting in the loss of some new members for some Associations.
We look forward to hearing any further feedback or thoughts on this. -
08 May, '25
Matt Halltime-consuming keeping on top of duplicates. Either SSO or using the email address (1-2 other fields) as a unique identifier would be helpful.
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30 Jun, '25
OscarAlthough I understand that some organisations (including our own) have situations where multiple accounts share one email address, email addresses need to be a unique identifier to prevent rampant duplicates. The way I would see these two coexisting is that when a join form is filled out with an email address that already exists within the system, the user filling out the join form is warned that an account already exists using this same email. This message would say if you can not access your existing account, please contact the organisation, or something to that affect. Would need it to allow this warning to be overrode, maybe with a tick box that said "I require a second account registered under the same email address". Maybe this would have a custom field that could be filled out and would display in the duplicate management screen to provide context.
Regardless, this would prevent most unintentional creations of duplicate accounts, while still allowing the same email when needed. -
29 Aug, '25
Membes AdminThank you for the great input on this topic. Finding that right balance between preventing duplicate profiles and removing as much friction from people joining or engaging with the association is something we have tried many different combinations of with many different associations over the years, particularly from our days of building bespoke AMS’s. Over that time, where we did implement either prevention of joining where email exists or even just a message indicating a duplicate, there was a noticeable drop in new member joins when compared to just letting a join go through with minimal friction. Maximising growth of Membership is obviously a primary objective of the Membes AMS platform and to that aim have found the best approach to meeting this objective is letting joins go through with minimal friction, but then providing effective mechanisms for managing duplicates.
See continued below >>>> -
19 Sep, '25
Rubenanother workaround is contacts/users with badge numbers or auto generated unique usernames.
and allow for an email address login that can be changed if the user no longer uses that email address. and also include a secondary email/recovery method if they lose access to their email address.
so then we could encourage members to use their user id's instead of email addresses for registrations/logins but still allow for email to be used as well similar to wordpress' login system. -
11 Nov, '25
Oscar"When assessing the user experience closely, it could cause the user confusion at best, or a stall to joining that does not start again for some users, potentially resulting in the loss of some new members for some Associations."
A few points on this that I find frustrating.
Firstly, this concern relates to flagging the same email address when it’s used to sign up more than once. This process is not about preventing new members from joining, it’s about identifying when an existing member attempts to create a second account with the same email address.
If we are considering user confusion, it’s far more confusing for a member who successfully creates an account to then find they cannot log in or access member only resources because a duplicate record has been created. -
11 Nov, '25
Oscar<<<< continued from above
What I’m suggesting is not to block anyone from signing up twice with the same email (which, I should point out, is standard across nearly every service that requires an account) but simply to flag that an account may already exist. A prompt like "An account with this email address may already exist. Are you sure you want to create a new one?" would be clear to anyone who encountered it.
If the user is knowingly sharing an email with someone else, this message will not be a surprise, and they can ignore the message. But if they aren’t, the prompt encourages them to reset their password rather than unknowingly creating a duplicate account, which can result in access issues.
This approach is standard practice and helps protect the user experience by preventing the very confusion and frustration we’re all trying to avoid.