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All About Managing Duplicate Accounts & Contacts: https://help.pm.leapevent.tech/a/1394859
A clean database is always important - with an all-in-one CRM like PatronManager, it's even more important. It's imperative you're able to trust your Contact/Account records and trust your reports.
At its core, that's what Duplicate Management is all about! A clean database is a trustworthy database. In this article, we'll answer your biggest dupe questions:
- How are duplicate Contacts and Accounts created?
- How can we prevent duplicate creation?
- I know there's a Salesforce Duplicate Management system - can we use that?
- How do we check for duplicates in our system?
- How do we merge duplicates if we find any?
How are duplicate Contacts and Accounts created?
Primarily, duplicates are created when users do not search the database before creating a new Contact. Whether it's during qualification or just not finding someone while entering a donation, errant manual entry is the number one way new duplicates are created.
In rarer cases, incorrectly importing Accounts/Contacts can result in duplicates.
How can we prevent duplicate creation?
A few ways!
- Make sure your staff knows how to sell tickets in PatronManager Box Office properly - that is, looking up patrons when they start the sales process, and completing an order as To Be Qualified (TBQ) when appropriate
- Be sure everyone is using the global search bar to find Contacts and Accounts - and that they're looking at the results! - before creating new Contacts/Accounts
- Empower your staff to make edits to existing Contacts/Accounts when they get new, updated information
- If you're importing data - Contacts, Accounts, Donations, or Tickets - make sure those records are coming in as TBQ so they can be qualified against your existing database
I know there's a Salesforce Duplicate Management system - can we use that?
You can - as long as you set it up and use it exactly as we describe in these two articles:
- How to Set Up Duplicate Management for Accounts and Contacts
- How to Merge Duplicate Accounts and Contacts in Lightning
Salesforce Duplicate Management is a powerful tool that flags potential duplicates for your review according to the rules you define. In the articles linked above, we'll show you how to set up those rules for use with PatronManager, how to review your duplicates, and how to merge them.
Salesforce Duplicate Management is a Lightning-only feature; switch to Lightning today to start using it!
Warning: setting duplicate management up incorrectly can break PatronManager. Be sure to follow these instructions carefully.
How do we check for duplicates in our system?
As long as you've set up Duplicate Management as described above, you'll find your potential duplicates in special reports.
However, those reports only find duplicates created after you've set up Duplicate Management. To check for older duplicates, you've got two options:
- You can start a paid duplicate management project with us - we'll find the duplicates for you
- You can make a custom report as we describe in "Find duplicates" right here
How do we merge duplicates if we find any?
As long as you've set up Duplicate Management as described above, you'll merge your duplicates from the potential duplicate report you review - it's pretty fast, and you get to watch your "total potential duplicates" on your report fall to 0. Satisfying!
However, those reports only find duplicates created after you've set up Duplicate Management. To merge older duplicates, you've got two options:
- You can switch back to Classic and merge any duplicates you find manually
- For more details, see "Merge duplicates" right here
- You can start a paid duplicate management project with us - with your help, we can find and merge the duplicate records en masse