Is it possible to merge multiple membership for one contact?

[mdatcher]

I have an interesting situation in my organization. We have a few members end up with multiple memberships listed in their contact record. Because of this, the older membership is listed as expired while the newest one is still current. The problem is that the expired memberships create issues when we perform searches for expired members. What is the recommended method of dealing with these straggling memberships? I was wondering if there was a method for merging two memberships that are attached to the same contact? Or maybe there is a more elegant method. Thanks for your help.



Here is an example of the issue:

We offer two types of memberships: Individual and family (defined as two individuals at the same address). We have Contact A and Contact B who started as individual members. Later, Contacts A and B moved into the same address. During renewal season, one of the contacts uses the online renewal form, but CiviCRM generated a new membership rather than updating the existing one. I do not want to lose the information contained in the old membership.

[joanne]

1. AFAIK, you can't merge memberships through the UI.  My "solution" will probably receive tons of criticism for dabbling directly in the database but in similar situations I :

• Make a record of both the original membership_id and the new (unwanted) membership_id. (Hover over the edit button for a membership record and the url you will be sent to appears on the bottom left of the screen - it will contain cid= XXXXXX&id=YYYYYY; the membership id is YYYYY.)
• In the database in civicrm_membership_payment edit  the row linking the new membership_id to the new contribution_id so that it links the old membership_id to the new contribution_id. (I use phpmyadmin.)
• Go back into the CiviCRM UI, confirm there is no contribution associated with the new (unwanted) membership.
• Edit the original membership through the UI to reflect the new membership type and start and end dates.
• Delete the new (now redundant) membership through the UI.

2. Although the process I described will stop, say, contact A appearing when you search for expired memberships it won't stop contact B from appearing if you just do an advanced search.

I know very little about inherited memberships, but perhaps contact B should be inheriting a membership from contact A. Then I think you should be able to use search builder to just find people with an expired individual membership who don't also have a current family membership (or vice versa when needed).