Holding a family’s Registration Status is a significant responsibility. The parish that holds this status is accountable for maintaining the family’s current address, phone number, email, sacramental records, and household details. Because this information in ParishSOFT Family Suite is shared across all parishes, the entire Archdiocese relies on your parish to keep accurate and up-to-date records for the families registered with you.
If your parish has not had recent contact with the family—no Mass attendance, no contributions, no communication—it may no longer be the appropriate parish to carry that responsibility. When another parish has a more active and ongoing relationship with the family, including sacramental records and regular engagement, that parish should hold the Registration Status.
Releasing the record, by Unregistering the family, allows the engaged parish to better serve the family while still enabling your parish to maintain communication, record contributions, and track involvement. The only thing that truly changes is that your parish will no longer be able to update the family’s contact details, sacramental records, or census and statistical information. This process helps ensure that all family records remain clean, accurate, and meaningful.
Please review the Duplicate Families Registered at Multiple Parishes listing and make the appropriate updates in your parish’s database. Specifically, verify whether your parish should continue holding the Registration Status for each family listed.
If your parish has a valid registration form on file and maintains an ongoing relationship with the family, your parish may be the correct parish of registration. If not, or if the registration was entered in error, please update the Registration Status and Family Group accordingly.
Once we receive completed forms from all parishes involved:
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If no conflict exists (i.e., one parish selects PERM and the other DUPE), we will proceed with the merge.
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If both parishes select DUPE, we will retain the record at the parish with the most recent Registration Date as the permanent record.
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If more than one parish selects PERM, we will contact those parishes and ask them to coordinate directly to determine the correct parish of registration.
If the family is truly active at more than one parish, please communicate jointly with the family to clarify that while they are welcome to participate in multiple communities, they may only be registered at one parish in the ParishSOFT Family Suite. That parish will carry the responsibility for maintaining contact information, name details, sacramental records, and statistical reporting.
Once the parishes agree on the correct parish of registration, submit the signed Merge Duplicate Records Request Form to missionsupport@archspm.org. We’ll then add the request to the merge queue.
Questions? Reach out to us at missionsupport@archspm.org — we’re happy to help!