Merge persons

Note: 

This function is not intended for acquisitions or mergers of companies or for contact persons that leave employment. Instead it is intended for merging persons and persons that essentially always have been one entity, but appear in Profit multiple times because of user or conversion errors.

After the merge, the history of the source will be lost!

Conversion errors or user errors can result in a person appearing multiple times in Profit. Using a merge, (underlying) data of the source that are not present in the target, are transferred to the target. The source is then dropped and the person will appear only once.

Example: 

Assume that a while ago you created person A in Profit. Later on your colleague added the same person as new person B, including for example a new account number. The data for person A should however be registered in one location to keep your administration reliable. When you perform the merge, person A is the target and person B is the source. The source data will be deleted after the merge. Person B then no longer exists but the new account number is now included in person A's data.

Description

The following conditions must be met if you merge persons:

  • Persons must be of the same gender, or the target must have Unknown for the gender.
  • The birth date is not allowed to be changed if the target is an employee.
  • Persons cannot both have data of the same type, for example they cannot both be Income tax client or Employee.
  • The persons cannot have different social security numbers (BSN).

The following data are transferred using the following methods:

  • Fields: A field is only transferred if the field for the target person is empty.
    A group of fields (such as Name) is only transferred from the source if all fields in the group are empty in the target or if the fields that have been completed in the target have the same values as the source.
  • A type of the source is only transferred if the type does not exist in the target. If the type is present in both, the merge action is cancelled in its entirety. You could consider to first merge the specific types (provided the merge function is available): Merge sales contacts/debtors or Merge purchase contacts/creditors).
  • All address changes in the source are transferred to the target if the same combination of date and address does not exist yet.
  • If a telecommunication type is not present in the source but is present in the target, the communication data of the target is maintained.
  • A person can be the contact person for multiple organisations (in the view CRM / Organisations/persons / Contacts shown as ‘Person in organisation’). If the source person is the contact person in an organisation, data is only transferred to the target person if the combination of person and organisation does not yet exist in the target. The Organisational unit field is never transferred.
  • All dossier items are transferred from the source person to the target person.
  • Relationships that are not present in the target, are also transferred.
Merge persons

For the merge, the target is leading if the same data (e.g. name and work phone number) have been entered in both the source and the target. All underlying data and links will be transferred to the target if they do not exist in the target yet.

To merge:

  1. Go to: CRM / Organisation/person / Merge.
  2. Click on: New.
  3. Select the source.
  4. Select the target.
  5. Select the merge method:
    • D: Direct merge: if you want to merge one source and one target then it is best to select this option.
    • L: Add to list, merge later: select this if you want to merge large quantities of data. You can then run the action in the evening. If you select this option, you select the lines to merge when you are ready to start merging and then click on the Merge action. The organisations and persons are then merged.
  6. Click on: Finish.

    If you selected 'Direct merge' just now, the source and the target are now merged. If errors are detected, a message is displayed. Resolve the errors and start the 'Merge' again.

    If you selected the 'Add to list, merge later' check box, you now see a new line in the view that shows the selected source and target.

  7. Click on: New.

    You can now add more lines.

  8. Select the lines.
  9. Click on the action: Merge.

    A message is displayed. If you selected a lot of lines, the merge may take some time.

  10. Click on: OK.

The data is now merged.

See also