Unable to delete contacts permanently

Question

I have an org that has split into two. They already were working with two payment processors -> we're all sorted out - contacts and contributions have been migrated over into the spin-off CiviCRM database.

What we can't do is permanently delete the Contacts that have been moved into the spin-off CiviCRM database, because "This contact(s) can not be permanently deleted because the contact record is linked to one or more live financial transactions. Deleting this contact would result in the loss of financial data".

And that's ok with us as we've got all that into their spin-off CiviCRM database now. In fact right now we have double the monies. Is there any way around this - via the GUI?

Answer 1

You can turn off this check by setting hidden setting 'allowPermDeleteFinancial' to TRUE either in civicrm.settings.php or using api explorer

global $civicrm_setting;
$civicrm_setting['CiviCRM Preferences']['allowPermDeleteFinancial'] = TRUE;

or

HTH

Pradeep

Answer 2

I think you need to delete the contributions associated with the contacts that you want to delete before you delete the contacts. If you have also copied those across to the spin-off site then that would also make sense.