According to some reports, as many as 94% of organizations suspect that their customer and prospect data may be inaccurate. Duplications are common due to multiple sources of data, stale customer records, and lack of unique customer identifiers. The Business Edge has a tool that will allow you to easily identify if you have duplicate Customers in your master list and provides you with the ability to quickly merge the data.

In order to identify whether you have duplicate Customer records in your master file you can use the Customer Similar Records Inquiry located below:

Accounts Receivable System

A/R File Maintenance

Customer Misc. Maintenance

Merge Customers & Salespeople

Customer Similar Records Inquiry

The Inquiry will prompt the you to enter the number of leading characters you would like to test. The default is 16. If you would to change it to 8 you would get a lot more records. If you have multiple Customers that start with American or Universal for instance they would all come up as possible duplicates.

There are also options to only view records created after a certain date and optionally select to only show Customers with duplicate phone numbers or website in the even that Customers were entered under a completely different name.

Below is our results testing the first 16 characters.

When you find duplicates that you want to merge you can do so right on this screen.

First, start by identifying the primary customer in which any of the other matching customers that you select will be merged into. The customer highlighted below ABC Company, customer code 43-1000 is the Customer that we will define as the primary customer. On the right-hand side there are options to Absorb the previous record or Absorb the next record. In this case, we will select the Absorb next record to absorb the duplicate customer record below the highlighted Customer

After select which record, you would like to Absorb, The Business Edge allows you to select whether you would like to merge the unique alternate products, notes, addresses, contacts and certificate requirements.

When Merge these Customers is set as Yes, click OK and you will see the Enter & Edit Customer screen for the primary Customer for you to make any additional changes.

Once Customers are merged you cannot un-merge them.

Only Users with permission to Delete Customers will have access to this inquiry.