Auto-Link Member to Rider Profile

Overview

Clubs usually build their member list before their members have Horsify accounts, from a spreadsheet import or by adding people by hand. Horsify tries to join those records up with real accounts automatically, so a rider who signs up is recognised as a member of their club without anyone re-typing anything.

Linking happens by email address, and it runs at four moments: when a rider creates a Horsify account, when the club adds or imports members, overnight, and when the club saves a member record.

No manual action is needed beyond having the right email on the member record.

Two Links, Not One

A member record can carry two separate links, and it helps to know they're different:

• The Horsify account: this is what makes the person recognised as a member when they sign in. Until it's set, they can be in your member list and still be told they're not a member of the club.
• The rider profile: the horse, entry and results side of Horsify. An imported member gets a login-less rider profile so your club data has something to hang on; the goal is for the account they create to take over that same profile rather than starting an empty second one.

Who Should Use This Feature

Perfect For

• Club administrators managing members who are also Horsify platform users
• Association admins wanting member records linked to rider profiles for event registration

Prerequisites

• To edit member records you must be an admin, or staff with Members and volunteers access at Manage (see Staff Access)
• The member record must carry the same email address the rider uses on Horsify

How It Works

When You Save a Member Record

If the member has no Horsify account linked yet and has an email address, Horsify:

1. Looks for a Horsify account whose email matches exactly (case-insensitive)
2. Links the member record to that account
3. If the member was imported as a login-less rider and that account has no rider profile of its own, hands the imported profile over to the account, so the date of birth, address and emergency contact your club recorded carry across rather than being stranded
4. Links any pending membership applications with the same email for your organisation

It leaves the record unlinked when that account is already a member of your club on another record (one login holds one membership, so linking would give the same person two memberships and two renewal invoices), or when the account's profile is in another name, as when a couple shares one email address. The member record is still saved; if it is a second copy of someone already on your books, remove the copy.

This is why re-saving a member record fixes a member the overnight match left alone: it re-runs the match with a looser name check, on your say-so.

When You Add or Import Members, and Overnight

A club often builds its member list after some of its members already have Horsify accounts. So as soon as you add a member or finish an import, and again every night in the first couple of hours after midnight (your club's local time), Horsify looks through your members who have no account linked and links the ones it can be sure of:

• the member's own rider profile already has a login (they claimed it some other way), or
• there is a Horsify account whose email matches the record's, whose email address has been confirmed, and whose name matches the name on the record.

Because nobody is checking each match, this is stricter than saving a record yourself. It leaves a record unlinked when:

• the name on the account differs from the name on the record, or the account has no name on it (a shared family address, a maiden name, a different spelling)
• the account is already a member of your club on another record
• the record belongs to a child or other dependant managed from a parent's account, where the email on the record is the parent's
• the account is locked

For a record it leaves, open the member and save: that re-runs the match with you deciding. If the record is a second copy of someone already on your books, remove the copy instead.

When a Rider Signs Up

Sign-up does the same in the other direction, and then some:

• Any unlinked member records with that email are linked to the new account
• The membership applications behind those member records (same email) are linked too
• Any current invitations to that email are accepted automatically, and a Pending member record is promoted to Active
• Horsify tries to adopt the login-less rider profile your club created, instead of making a second one

That last step is deliberately cautious. It only adopts when the email turns up exactly one unclaimed profile and the name the person typed at sign-up matches the name on your imported record. If two people share the email, or the names don't match, Horsify creates a fresh profile instead, because a spare empty profile is easy to clean up, and attaching one person's account to another person's membership is not.

Families Sharing One Email Address

This is the one thing worth being careful about.

A club member's email is not a person. Parents routinely give the same address for themselves and each of their children, and Horsify's member-record link matches on email alone. So when a parent creates their account, every member row carrying that email is linked to the parent's account, including their children's.

The rider-profile side of the match is protected against this (it checks the name and refuses when the email is ambiguous), but the account link is not.

What to do about it:

• Record each member's own email address wherever they have one. This is the single best fix.
• For children who don't have their own email, use dependants under the parent's account rather than separate member rows on the parent's email. See Dependent and Child Membership.
• If a family's memberships have ended up merged onto one account, contact Horsify support. It's fixable, but not from the member screen.

Once a Member Is Linked

When a member record has a Horsify account attached, the club can no longer edit that member's name or email from the member screen. Those belong to the person and they change them in their own profile. You can still edit everything else, including notes, membership type, number, expiry and status.

If a linked member's name or email is wrong, ask them to correct it in their Horsify profile.

Key Behaviours at a Glance

Related Guides

• Member Management
• Member Import and Add
• Dependent and Child Membership
• Membership Applications\n\n---\n\nSource: wiki/features/AUTO_LINK_MEMBER_RIDER.md \nLast synced: 2026-10-21 13:16:38 UTC