Most organizations are able to edit the file at a rate of 2-3 minutes for every 25 groups of records, though it varies depending on your familiarity with your patrons and the amount of research you intend to put into each group. Since these lists are static, it’s important to review the files within 4-6 weeks of their original export date, at the most. This prevents issues with records that are changed within the database that might conflict with the merge decisions made during your review.

Sometimes the review files will be too large to complete within the time period allotted. For this reason we recommend you start on one file at a time. If you think you’ll need an extension, just let us know. We are happy to process your revisions on one file and give you a second review period for the other file.

Absolutely! The ID listed in Column B is the unique Account ID for the record. To see the record in PatronManager, copy the ID and pasted it at the end of your PatronManager URL, directly after "force.com/" in your web browser. Hit enter, and the page will reload with the Account in question.

That's a great question! Duplicates are typically inherent in your legacy system or were created in PatronManager as a result of migrating from multiple legacy databases. During the data migration process, we will always try to match Accounts and Contacts across the various import files. However, if we cannot find a clear match based on multiple points of data, we’ll need to create a new Account and Contact to ensure we aren’t associating a record with the wrong person. We save the deduplication process as the last step of your migration, so we can catch any duplicates that might have been created from different systems throughout the migration process. For this reason, we don’t recommend you spend too long tracing each individual Account on the lists back to your legacy system.

If you’re completing a dedupe outside of the implementation process, these duplicates are likely the result of poor qualification. For information on qualification best practices, see the How to Qualify Video Tutorial.

When two or more Accounts are merged, all related records (such as Contacts, Donations, Ticket Orders, Benefits, etc.) from the different Accounts will be combined onto the Primary Account. You won’t lose any related records by merging the Accounts on this list.

We will only be processing the merges based on the primary accounts marked in Column C, along with any updates to Account Name or Secondary Address listed in Column D. Any changes throughout the rest of the columns - such as an update to the spelling of a street address or phone format - will not automatically be processed and should be manually updated directly in PatronManager. (See FAQ #3 for instructions on how to navigate to a record from your review sheet.)

The files are formatted to best work with our merge program. Changing the layout of the file could create problems during the merge, so we recommend that you only fill in the necessary data to Columns C and D. If you have notes you think will be necessary to add, check in with your Data Specialist first to determine the best way to add them to the spreadsheet.

These fields do not automatically update with the change of Account Name. You should either update these fields manually if an Account Name has been changed, or if you’d like to update these fields in bulk, take a look at our DIY Data series.

If you’re having trouble making decisions based on the information listed in the file, we can add up to three additional fields from the following list from the Account level to make your revisions easier:

• Lifetime Donation History (Number)
• Lifetime Order Count
• First Donation Date
• Last Donation Date
• Account Badges
• Date Entered

If seeing some Contact data will be useful, we can add the First Name, Last Name and Email address for up to three Contacts from within these Accounts.

This project is only focused on merging duplicates, not deleting or purging records. If you’d like to explore archiving Account and Contacts, that will be another project for you to discuss with your Data Coordinator.

After your revisions are completed, we will do a thorough final pass of duplicate Contacts that live within these Accounts. The majority of these matches are typically very obvious duplicates, so there usually isn't any need to review duplicate contacts in a bulk review file.

We expect that there will be some remaining duplicates during the contact merge; for example, contacts with more than one email address that needs to be included in email marketing campaigns will need to retain their second record. We recommend dealing with duplicate contact records on a one-off basis as you come across them in your database by using the “Merge Contacts” button in the Contact related list on their Account.