Is it safe to delete multiple membership records after ensuring the Contact record has been merged?

Question

I am working on merging duplicate contact records, which is successful for the most part. However, I am finding that merging the contact record does not remove multiple membership records seen when pulling reports for membership year 2016.

For example: We merged all records for ContactA, so there is only one contact record for her. However, there are still two membership records for her in Civi that are exactly the same. They have the same contact ID (35747). All of the info is the same but there are two records – so it throws off all of our reports. She is not the only member where we find this happening. Is it safe to just delete one of the membership records since all the data has been merged into the other record?

Answer 1

It is okay to delete a duplicate membership, but if there is a payment associated with that membership record, that payment will also be deleted. If that is an issue, you may want to consider creating a new membership status to reflect these duplicate memberships, you'll be able to easily filter them from reports that way.