The Clean-up Utility is used to permanently remove person records from your database. After doing this, ALL the past membership, attendance, and contribution records for these people will be permanently deleted from the database.
It is recommended that you keep at least five years’ data in the system.
As with all utilities, it is recommended you create a backup just in case you delete something you don't want to.
After making the backup,
- Go into Membership
- Go to the Tools / Settings tab
- Click Data cleanup. If there isn't an option for data cleanup, go back to the main menu and make sure you are on the most updated version of 8.8. You can go to the Utilities menu to check for software updates.
- In the window, select the criteria for those you want to permanently remove. You can choose a specific removal reason like death or inactivity as well as choose the date range for their removal.
Note: It is not recommended to delete members who have been removed in the last few years, as their deletion may affect year-end congregational reports.
- Click Next and review the list shown. You can export or print a list of their information for record keeping.
- If everyone listed is approved to be deleted, click Continue and choose Yes to permanently delete the membership, attendance and contribution records for those listed.
