Customers to Merge

Sometimes customers are entered more than once in the system, or the details from one customer need to be combined with another customer.
This utility can be used to build a list of customers to be merged with other customer records.
It can be accessed from the Utilities menu for Accounts Receivable operations.

If there are any customer's that have already been merged, and the old records have not yet been deleted then the delete queue is initially displayed, as outlined in Customers To Delete.
Click the MERGE LIST button to return the Customers to Merge screen.

This list can also be populated by Importing a List of Customer to be merged, using the EXPORT and IMPORT buttons below.

Customers to be merged can be manually listed as follows:

SEQ

The sequence number tracks the records listed in this screen.

FROM CUSTOMER

Enter the "old" customer number that is to be merged, or select it from the Accounting Customer Search window.

The customer number must already exist in Customer Information and all transactions should be posted as unposted transactions may not get merged.

Note: The customer to be merged cannot be a "Parent" customer.

DESCRIPTION

The customer's name is displayed.

TO CUSTOMER

Enter the "new" customer number that is to be used, or select it from the Customer Search window.

The customer number must already exist in Customer Information and all transactions should be posted as unposted transactions may not get merged.

Note: The TO customer cannot be a "Child" customer and the option is provided to change the TO customer to the Parent.

DESCRIPTION

The customer's name is displayed.

Finished?

Click ACCEPT and save the list of customers.

ACTIONS:
Additional actions provided by buttons on the Customers Merge utility include:

• Identify Customers to Add to the Merge List:
  Click the BUILD button to select customers for the merge list based on activity, customer type, and credit rating, as outlined in Build Merge Customer List.

• Initiate the Merge of the Customers Listed:
  Click the MERGE button to print a list of the customers to be merged, merge the customers records, and assign a new Credit Rating to the "old" customer records that will no longer be used, as outlined in Print And Merge Customers.
  When there are duplicate document numbers the report lists the "From Doc#" and "To Doc#" when it has to rename one of them to complete the merge.
  Confirmation is required.

  Note: If the same Site numbers are used by the "old" customers and by the target customer, then the duplicate Site numbers from the "old" customers are deleted and are not transferred over to the target customer.

• Delete the Customers List:
  Click the DELETE LIST button to access the list of "old" customers that have already been merged and are proposed to be deleted, as displayed in Customers To Delete.

  Note: This button is only active when there is a list of merged "old" customer records, and the role assigned to the Operator has permission to delete customers.
  The role permission is setup in Security Roles on the Security tab of Configure System Settings.

• Populate the Merge List from Import File:
  

  • Click the EXPORT button to access the Selection Required dialogue box and select to either generate a spreadsheet with any existing From/To values on the Merge Customer List, or to generate a blank template, or to cancel and abort the export action.
    After listing all the From & To customers to be merged on the spreadsheet, save the spreadsheet to a tab-delimited text file.

  • Click IMPORT to copy the saved tab-delimited text file from your client machine to the data directory on the server in preparation for importing. The Select a File to Upload utility is used to search for the file and to rename it to "customer_merge.txt" before completing the upload.
    File upload success and failure is reported in the Information Log with the number of successful records, and with any errors such as:

    • Customer already on the List
    • From or To Customer is Invalid
    • From/To Customer is the same
    • From customer is a 'Parent'
    • To customer is a 'Child'

    The option is provided to continue with importing the successful records or to abort the update.