What happens when I delete a contact or child?

In line with Data Protection best practices (and compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation [GDPR] Right to be Forgotten), ChurchSuite makes it easy to permanently delete the data of adult contacts and children that are no longer part of your organisation and for whom you no longer need to process data. However, there may be personal data that your organisation is required or able to retain under another lawful basis where consent has been withdrawn. For example, where there is a legal safeguarding obligation to retain a record of a child's involvement or attendance, or where there is a financial accounting obligation to retain a record of donations and Gift Aid details. In this article, we explain in detail what happens when a contact or child is deleted.

What happens when you delete a contact or child?

When you delete a contact in the Address Book, the following changes are made:

Address Book

• The contact and all their details will be removed from the Address Book immediately and cannot be reinstated. The deleted contact's name and deletion date are maintained in the Deleted Contacts report
• The contact is unlinked from a linked spouse/partner. While the relational links are severed, the spouse/partner is retained unchanged unless also deleted individually
• The contact is removed from all flows, tags and key dates and all historic flow tracking is deleted
• The contact is unlinked from any linked form responses but the form responses persist unlinked
• The contact will be removed from all rotas, ministries, plans, groups, events and organisations
• Invitation links will no longer work for events and forms
• The contact will be removed as an overseer for all events, ministries and bookings
• All notes, change logs and communication logs pertaining to the contact will be deleted
• Links to the contact's My Consent, Manage Communication and Rota Serving pages will no longer work
• Any unsent previously scheduled emails/SMS will continue to be sent as they have already been submitted to a delivery queue pending release at the due date/time
• The contact will no longer show in the results of any reports, except the "Deleted Contacts" report (see later in this article), which will list the deleted contact's first name, last name and details of the date, time and user that deleted the contact
• The link between the contact and any ChurchSuite User account they have is severed but the user account remains active until archived or deleted

Children module

• The contact is unlinked from all linked children. The parent/carer name, relationship and basic contact details are retained against each child as a "Not in the Address Book" parent/carer unless also deleted individually
• Historic "Team" attendance for gatherings/groups is unaffected. A text-based record of the contact's name is maintained against all historic attendance, providing a safeguarding record of team, children and visitors that were present in a group on any given attendance date

Attendance module

• The contact will no longer appear in the contact list when adding an attendance record
• Attendance records will no longer show that the deleted contact was in attendance for all historic dates but the attendance "counts" (category and group totals) remain unchanged

Calendar module

• The contact will be removed from all future and past events with free tickets - including all records of the contact's sign-up, event invitations, event question responses and event attendance check-ins. Events will show no record of the deleted contact having signed up and ticket quantities on the event will be adjusted to reflect the deleted contact
• The contact will be unlinked from all future and past events with paid-for tickets. Those event sign-ups will be changed from "In ChurchSuite" to "Not in ChurchSuite" and the sign-up first name and last name will be retained intact, along with all ticket and payment details, event question responses and check-ins. The sign-up contact details (email and mobile/telephone) are removed so that no further contact through ChurchSuite is possible. Refunds for paid-for tickets for deleted contacts will therefore continue to be possible. Your Stripe account will however retain certain information about the sign-ups and their payments. Events will continue to show accurate "paid-for" ticket quantities and ticket sales for the deleted contact's 'unlinked' sign-up, so everything stays in balance with your organisation's accounts
• The contact will be removed as an event overseer for all past and future events

Small Groups module

• The contact is removed from all past, active and future small groups and from any clusters they oversee
• The contact name is removed from all small group attendance data but the numerical group attendance totals remain accurate

Rotas module

• The contact is removed from all dates on past and future rotas with no notification to ministry overseers
• The contact is removed from all active and archived ministries
• All records of contact unavailability are deleted
• The contact will be removed as a ministry overseer for all ministries

Giving module

• The contact will be unlinked from a linked giver profile, which becomes a "Not in the Address Book" giver profile that otherwise remains intact, including their site and giver Tags. A previous "Couple giver" status will be removed as the giver is no longer linked to the spouse in the Address Book
• The contact name, address and email details are copied over from the deleted contact to the unlinked giver profile for the purpose of donation records and for tax and financial audit purposes

Bookings module

• The contact is unlinked from a linked booking customer profile and becomes a "Not in the Address Book" customer profile that continues to be maintained against all past and future bookings
• The contact is removed as an overseer for all booking Types and Resources
• The payment history for booking charges paid by the deleted contact is maintained intact

Planning module

• The contact will no longer show on any plans or templates

Network module

• The contact will be removed from all organisation member lists and any previously assigned roles in an organisation will be unassigned

My ChurchSuite

• My ChurchSuite access is revoked and their password deleted
• The contact will no longer be able to log into My ChurchSuite
• The contact will no longer be visible to others within My ChurchSuite

How to delete a contact or child

There are several places within the Address Book and/or Children module where users can delete contacts or children individually or in batches. In the examples below we demonstrate within the Address Book but the methods are the same in the Children module.

1. From the Contacts list in the Address Book, select Delete from the contact Actions:

2. From a contact's Profile page, click More and select Delete:

3. You can bulk delete multiple selected contacts using the batch Delete action on a Contacts list. As you tick one or more contacts in the list, the Actions menu is revealed. Select Delete from the batch actions list:

Viewing a log of deleted contacts or children

The Deleted Contacts and Deleted Children reports list the name and site of all contacts or children deleted within a range of dates and the date, time and user that made the deletion. Deleted contacts and children cannot be reinstated - deleted means deleted!