Merge organisations and persons

Your database may get polluted because of organisations and/or persons appearing multiple times. This could be the result of importing large quantities of contact data, a conversion or user errors. The more users are authorised to add persons or organisations, the likelier it is there will be duplicates.

It is often not about slight differences in spelling, but for instance about ‘abbreviation versus full name’. For example, ‘TMS’ versus ‘Total Management Systems’.

You merge organisations (and persons) in order to clean up your database while preserving your data.

This functionality is not intended for takeovers or mergers of companies or for contacts that are leaving their employment. It is about merging organisations and persons that have, in essence, always been one and the same but that, due to user or conversion errors now appear more than once in Profit.

Note:

After the merger has been completed, the history of the source is lost.

Description

By merging the (underlying) data in the source that is not present in the target, is copied to the target. The source is then dropped. You can merge two organisations, two persons or a person and an organisation.

In the image below, you see two organisations with almost identical names. You merge them into one organisation, transferring various data (including communication, contacts, dossier items) from the source organisation to the target organisation. The merge will delete the source organisation. This is a simple example that does not include the merging of underlying types (such as sales debtor).

Hierarchy of organisations/persons to be merged

There is a type-based hierarchy (for which we assume that it is likely that a specific organisation or person contains data that is more up-to-date):

• Person: Employee > Income tax client > Sales contact / Purchase contact > Rest
• Organisation: Employer > Client Vpb > Sales contact / Purchase contact > Rest

If the source is of a type that is higher in the hierarchy than the target, an error message will be displayed. In this case, you switch the source and target and select the merge operation again.

In Profit you can only merge two identical subtypes (sales contacts/debtors, purchase contacts/creditors, etc.).

Example: data you can merge includes:

• Fields: merge fields of the source and the target (e.g. birth date).
• Contact persons at an organisation
• Contact data
• Dossier items
• Types
• Telecommunication: information on the way persons and organisations can be reached.
• Relationships

  Note: 

  You can only merge a type (employer, sales contact, user, etc.) if the type does not exist in the target. If the same type does appear in both source and target, you first have to merge that type.

Procedure

• Check for duplicate organisations

  There are a number of ways to check your database for duplicates, including the Totalizer. You can then merge the duplicate organisations or persons that are found. We recommend you systematically check and improve your database.

• Merge organisations

  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.

• Merge persons

  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.

• Merge a person with an organisation

  Under certain conditions you can merge a person with an organisation.

• Merge an organisation with a person

  Under certain conditions you can merge an organisation with a person.

Also see

• Merge type data (for example, Debtors)

• Transfer type data from one person to another person (for example Debtor data)

• Merge purchase contacts