Clients · Data hub · Ops

Seeing one client, not three

Linking a person's different emails — and their couples/family group — into one view. What it fixes and how it'd work. 13 Jul 2026.

Right now, in the Clients tab, a contact is an email address. If a client books with one email, pays with another, and comes back later on a third, we see three different people — three half-stories, none of them complete.

This note explains a way to fix that, and the trickier couples-and-family version of it. It's an idea we're tracking, not something built yet.

The problem, in one example

Take a real client (details changed). To us today she looks like three separate people:

Delphi May
maydelphi@icloud.com
Booked a session
Delphi May
maydelphimay@gmail.com
Paid for it
D. May
delphi.may99@…
Came back months later
↓  same phone, same person  ↓
Delphi May  ·  one client
maydelphi@icloud.com · maydelphimay@gmail.com · delphi.may99@… — one timeline, one full history

The good news: we can already tell these are the same person, because the data hub holds the phone number, saved card, name and login behind each order and booking. We looked — in a partial sample we found a dozen real clients hiding behind multiple emails exactly like this, and that's the floor, not the ceiling.

The couples & family twist

Because we offer couples and family therapy, there's a second, different situation — and it's important we don't get the two confused:

Different people, one household. A couple or family shares a course of therapy — one partner pays the first session, another pays the next, all under the same roof, sometimes the same phone or card.

These are genuinely different people. We must not merge them into one — but we do want to see them linked as a group, so the family's sessions and payments make sense together.

So there are two moves, and a person decides which one applies:

Same person → join
Same name, same phone. Delphi's three emails become one client.
Same household → group
Different names, shared phone/card, a couples or family session. Keep them separate, link them as a group.

Helpfully, the data hub already knows which sessions are Couples or Family — that's a strong hint for telling a household apart from one person using two emails.

What it means for the team

How it would work day-to-day

The system does the hunting; a person always makes the final call. It surfaces a suggestion — "these two emails share a phone and the same name" — with the evidence, and you pick one of three:

Same person

Join the emails into one client.

Same household

Link them as a couple/family, kept separate.

Unrelated

Coincidence (e.g. a shared work phone) — leave alone.

It's the same kind of review queue we already use elsewhere in the hub — a quick, tap-to-decide card.

Nothing is ever overwritten or deleted. The original records stay exactly as they are. Linking is just an extra layer on top that gives us the joined-up view — and any link can be undone in one click if it's wrong.

Idea — not built Captured for planning. No decision needed yet — sharing so the ops picture is clear before we scope it. Questions or "yes, let's look at this" → give Luke a shout.