Constituent Matching for Participant Records

To help track information about registrants, online registration forms create new constituent records or match to existing constituents whenever people register. Forms automatically use the contact information hosts submit to search for existing records before creating new records. To also automatically check whether guests have existing constituent records, you must configure forms to collect contact information for them.

The form automatically checks whether the host — the person who pays for or completes the registration — has an existing record. It uses the required First name, Last name, and Email fields from Billing and payment in the form designer to perform these checks. For more information, see Automatic Constituent Matching.

Guests are the additional people a host includes in their registration. To automatically check whether a guest has an existing constituent record, you must configure the form. Include either Email or Phone — in addition to the required First name and Last name fields — when you configure Registrant details in the form designer. For more information, see Automatic Constituent Matching.

Note: If the form doesn't find a match for an existing constituent record for the guest, a named guest record is created. For more information, see Hosts and Guests.

Tip: If the registrant leaves both Email and Phone blank and only provides first and last names for their guests, the form creates guest records for all named guests. It does not search for matches on existing constituent records. To ensure the form searches for a match on guests, set either Email or Phone to required. For more information about named guests, see Hosts and Guests.

Note: If you select Allow unknown guests under Get Started on the form, registrants can sign up additional guests without providing any of the guests' information. If the registrant does not provide names for their guests, the form creates guest records for all unknown guests. It does not search for matches on existing constituent records. For more information about unknown guests, see Hosts and Guests.

Note: If a host or guest already has a sponsor record in database view, the form matches them to their existing constituent record and creates a participant record. It also links the new participant record to the sponsor record.

Tip: If duplicates slip into your database, you can move event information from a duplicate constituent record to the one you're keeping. From an event’s record, under Participants, select Work with participants. From the list, select Edit from a participant or guest’s menu and then search for and select the record to switch to. For more information, see Participants.