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      Merge Customers

      Occasionally, you may find that you have two Customer records which really should be a single record. LOU makes it easy to solve that problem with Merge Customers.

       

      Go to Customers

       

      On the Customer Profile you will see a button that says Merge. This will allow you to initiate a Customer Merge.

       

      There are three options on this Merge button.

      • Merge Duplicate Customer – this option works when you already know the duplicate Customer you want to merge.
      • Search Merged Customers – this option allows you to identify Customers that have already been merged into a Customer or had Customers merged into their record.
      • Suggest Duplicates – this option will search your Customer list and offer up suggestions for Duplicates you might want to Merge with this Customer record.

       

      Merge Duplicate Customer

      When you know there is a duplicate Customer you want to merge, you can select the Merge Duplicate Customer option from the Customer Profile.

      There are a few things to consider before proceeding:

      • Once a Merge has occurred, you can view a history of this action on the Customer Profile.
      • Carefully consider which Customer should remain Active and which Customer should be merged into that Customer and then deactivated.
      • Customers can be merged even if there are Pending Transactions such as open Orders and Estimates. If the Customer being merged and deactivated has Pending Transactions, those will transfer to the Customer being kept. If you don’t want the transactions transferred, you must hold off on merging Customers until the transactions are complete.
        • Customers with Pending Invoices cannot be merged until Pending Invoices are Complete. 
      • Customers cannot be merged if they have a Balance on their profile. Whether a Credit or true Balance Due, this Balance must be zero before merging.
      • Payments on File will not be transferred from the Customer being deactivated to the Customer being Kept.
      • Aliases on the Customer record will not be transferred to the Kept Customer.
      • The Unmerge option will not fully reverse a Merge. 
      • If you have Group Security enabled, there are two permissions for Merge Customers.
        • Can Merge
        • Can Merge Pending Transactions
      • Parent/Child Relationships: Customers with active Parent/Child relationships cannot be merged into other Customers.
        • Parent Customers can have other Customers merged into them. 
      • Unexpired Customer Portal Links for merged and deactivated Customers will land on the LOU login page instead of the Customer Portal Link. 

       

      Merge Customers

      1. Click Merge
      2. Select Merge Duplicate Customer
      3. A pop-up will ask you how you want to proceed. Do you want to Keep this Customer record and merge a different Customer into it? Do you want to Deactivate this Customer by merging it into a different Customer?
      4. The Merge Duplicate Customers pop-up will open and allow to select the Customer under either Merge This Customer or Into This Customer, depending on your selections above. As an example, we chose Keep the Customer record we’re on, so the pop-up is asking to select the Customer we want to Merge into the Customer we’re keeping.
      5. LOU has prepopulated the Into This Customer field with the Customer Profile we are in, since we chose to Keep it. However, if you determine you want to change that selection on this pop-up you can. Simply select a different Customer from the dropdown.
      6. When you are confident in your selections in both fields, click Next.
        1. REMEMBER! A Customer merge cannot be fully reversed.
      7. The pop-up will change to reflect the Customer options and provide you one more chance to view the Customer Profiles for each record before merging. This pop-up will also list any pending transactions for the Customer you are deactivating and indicate that they will be reassigned to the Customer remaining. You will be asked to confirm this change by checking the box next to the Pending Transactions.
        1. You must confirm all Pending Transactions to proceed.
        2. TIP! If you have Pending Transactions that you do not wish to transfer, you must complete those transactions before proceeding with the Merge.
      8. Click Next.
      9. The merge will complete and a pop-up will indicate that the Merge was successful and give you the opportunity to go into either Customer record or close out of the window.

      Once you have merged Customers successfully the duplicate record which you deactivated is not gone. It is deactivated and will not appear as an Active Customer in your database. If you open that Customer record, you will see a large Inactive bar at the top, just as with all other deactivated Customers.

       

      Additionally, when viewing the Customer Profile for the Active Customer, you will notice that the Merge button has a badge on it, indicating there is a merged record associated with this Customer. The Purchase History tile will also now say Customer History. This change is made because there may be Purchase History from the merged record included, now that the data exists in a single record.

       

      Search Merged Customers

      While merges cannot be undone, you can view a history of the merge and access the deactivated merged records.

       

      Click the Merge button and select Search Merged Customers.

      From this page, you can view Customers that were merged into this Customer record and vice versa. You can see the date merged and who merged the records, as well as double-click or use the Actions link on the line item to view the record.

       

      Unmerge Customers

      When viewing the Merged Customers, the Actions link has an Unmerge option. This option should be used with extreme caution because it is not a complete reversal of the Merge. The following will occur:

      • Payments, Orders, Estimates, Invoices, Pending Orders, and other transactional data will not be restored or transferred to the reactivated/unmerged Customer. That data will remain on the Active Customer even if it originated on the Customer being unmerged.
      • Payments on File originally associated with the deactivated Customer remain associated with this Customer. However, any Payments on File added to the Kept Customer will not transfer to the reactivated Customer.
      • The Purchase History tile will be called Customer History on both Customer records after the restore.

       

      Suggest Duplicates

      If you want to quickly see if there are duplicate Customer records to the Customer Profile you are viewing, you can select Search Duplicates.

      Match Points will tell you how many data points match between the Customer records. You can click the number to see which fields match.

      Using these Match Points, you can determine whether the Customer records should be merged. Most often, the higher the Match Points the more likely the records should be merged. However, final determination of that is up to you.