Member lists get scruffy over time. A name gets imported in ALL CAPS, two records get added for the same child by mistake, a parent's phone number drifts out of date. The Tools page in the main sidebar gathers the small helpers that fix this — so you can spot problems in one place and put them right in a few clicks.
Where to find it
In the left sidebar, click Tools. The page shows a card for each tool currently available to you. Click any card to open the tool.
Tools is visible to leaders and group admins. Parents and young leaders don't see it.
Three tools live here today:
| Tool | Use it when |
|---|---|
| Data Cleanup | Names are in odd capitalisation, postcodes look messy, or medical fields are full of "n/a" |
| Duplicate Detection | You suspect the same child has been added to your group twice |
| Data Verification | You want to check parents have confirmed their child's details — emergency contacts, medical, etc. |
Data Cleanup
Clicking Data Cleanup opens a three-step wizard that scans every member record in your group, shows you exactly what would change, and applies the fixes only when you say so.
Step 1 — Scan
The wizard runs a scan and gives you an overall health score out of 100, plus a list of the categories where it found issues. Green means you're in good shape; amber and red mean there's something to tidy up.
The categories it looks for:
| Category | What gets flagged |
|---|---|
| Sentinel values | Medical, dietary, or special-needs fields filled in with "none", "n/a", "nil" |
| Name casing | First or last names typed in ALL CAPS or all lowercase |
| Gender variants | Non-standard entries (e.g. "M" instead of "Male") |
| Ethnicity variants | Values that don't match the census codes |
| Religion variants | Non-standard religion entries |
| Postcode formatting | Postcodes without spaces or with odd casing |
| Phone formatting | Numbers without a country code or in an inconsistent format |
| Email formatting | Email addresses with mixed-case or stray whitespace |
Tick the categories you want to fix and click Next.
Step 2 — Preview
The wizard now lists every individual change it would make: member name, the field affected, what's there now, and what it would become.
Each change has a tick box. By default everything is selected — untick anything you'd rather leave alone (for example, a name that's meant to be all-caps).
Step 3 — Apply
Click Apply changes and the wizard updates every record in one go, then shows you a summary of what was changed. You can rerun the scan straight away to confirm the score has gone up.
Duplicate Detection
The same child can sneak into your group twice — usually after an OSM import, or when a parent re-registers a child whose record was archived. Duplicate Detection finds these pairs and lets you sort them out one at a time.
Each suspected pair shows both members side-by-side with:
- Name and date of birth
- Section
- How many badges each has earned
- How many events each has attended
- When the record was created
- A confidence label — High (very likely the same person) or Medium (worth checking)
- A short reason (e.g. "Same name and date of birth")
For each pair you have three options:
| Action | What happens |
|---|---|
| Merge | Opens a merge dialog where you pick which details to keep on the surviving record; the other is archived |
| Archive | Archive one of the two members without merging — useful when one is clearly the outdated stub |
| Dismiss | Marks the pair as "not a duplicate" so it stops appearing in the list |
The card highlights the richer record (more badges or attendance) in blue, so you can usually tell at a glance which one to keep.
When you've worked through the list, the sheet shows an "All caught up" message. If new duplicates appear later — after another import, for example — they'll show up next time you open the tool.
Data Verification
The Data Verification card opens the verification panel you might already know from the Members page. It tracks which member fields parents have recently confirmed, and lets you send a verification email so they can update everything at once.
The tool is the same — it has just moved to its own home on the Tools page, so it's easier to find without hunting through the Actions menu.
For the full guide to verification campaigns, rolling RSVP prompts, and the coverage view, see Keeping Member Data Up to Date.
What's next
- Keeping Member Data Up to Date — the full guide to data verification campaigns and rolling prompts.
- Editing Member Information — how to fix one record by hand rather than in bulk.
- Managing Your Member List — searching, filtering, and bulk actions on the Members page.
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What's next?
Related guidesKeeping Member Data Up to Date
How Scoutworks keeps member details fresh — through a one-off verification request you send to parents, and through quiet prompts during the RSVP flow.
Read articleEditing Member Information
How to view and update member details across all tabs in the member detail dialog.
Read articleManaging Your Member List
How to view, search, filter, and perform bulk actions on your group's member list.
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