You can consolidate duplicate accounts i.e., merge them into one with the Merge this duplicate to option from the Action menu. You can use this option when you know for a fact that two accounts have been created for the same corporate customer when there should only be one. This is especially important when it comes to revenue accounting (actual and expected revenue).

When you merge two accounts all information stored within the previously separate accounts is combined into one account. Consequently, B2B Sales can work out the complete revenue of the de-duplicated account.

During the merge process the following steps occur:

• You select an account (source account) which you want to merge into another account (target account).
• B2B Sales will set the source account to inactive.
• All the information except for the address will be extracted from the source account.
• Once the new information has been extracted from the source account it will be appended to the target account. Please note that the source account will not overwrite existing information or any empty fields in the target account.

What happens during the merge process?

Upon completion of the merge:

• The target account remains active.
• B2B Sales asks whether you want to open the target account.
• The inactive source account is deleted.

Before you use the Merge this duplicate to option:

• Consider carefully which of the duplicates should be the source and which the target account. As a rule of thumb, the target account should be the one containing the most complete data. Reason: The source account will not overwrite any empty (!) fields in the target account. So, those fields will stay empty in the target account even if the information may have been in the source account.
• Manually copy and paste information from the Remarks box of the source account to the target account, provided you require this data in the target account.

Merging duplicate accounts into one account:

1. Select the Accounts icon.
2. Right-click the required source account and then select Merge this duplicate to.
   
   B2B Sales displays the Account Merge dialog informing you which account you have picked as a source account.
   

3. Locate the target (!) account.
   To do this, use any of the following steps or any combination of the following steps:

• Enter the first letter(s) of the account into the Quick Search field and select Go.
  For example, if the name of the account starts with “Ser”, enter “Ser” into the Quick Search field and select Go.
• Use additional search criteria by selecting the Search button and entering your search criteria
• Next to Display select the picklist and choose a different selection filter
• Move from one record to the next in the list with the up and down cursor keys on the keyboard
• Scroll through the alphabetical list of names by using the vertical scrollbar.

B2B Sales will display a list with all matching entries.

Caution: Please only carry out a merge if you are 100% sure the accounts ARE duplicates.

4. Highlight the required target account and then select the Merge button.

B2B Sales displays a message box informing which accounts you are about to merge and that you cannot undo your changes.

5. Do one of the following:

• Select No if you want to cancel the merge.
• Select Yes to merge the source account into the target account.
  Depending on the amount of data being merged, this may take a few seconds. B2B Sales then displays the Open the target? message box.
  

6. Select Yes to see the results.

Effects of merging a source to a target account