Detecting and merging duplicates

Goal. Find the records that belong to the same person and merge them into one without losing cases, notes, communications or appointments.

Prerequisites. The "View clients" and "Edit clients" permissions.

How they are detected

The CRM treats two records of the same company that share a phone number or an email address as duplicates. The "Clients" list shows the notice "N possible duplicates"; clicking it opens the "Duplicates" screen.

Each group states the shared value, "Same phone: …" or "Same email: …", and lists its records with the number of cases of each.

Merging

1. In the group, mark as "Primary" the record to keep. Choose the most complete one or the one with cases.
2. Click "Merge into primary".
3. Read the confirmation: "Cases, notes, communications and appointments from N duplicates will be moved to "Name" and then deleted. This cannot be undone.". Confirm with "Confirm".
4. The CRM reports "Clients merged". When no group is left, the screen says "No duplicates — your client base is clean.".

The cases, notes, communications and appointments of the merged records move to the primary one. The primary record's contact details are not modified.

Preventing duplicates

• When creating or editing a client, the CRM rejects a phone number that already exists, with or without country code.
• The CSV import skips rows whose phone number or email match an existing client.
• Leads arriving through the inbox are linked to an existing record from the "Context" panel instead of creating another.

Troubleshooting

• The duplicates notice does not go away. Reload the list; the count is computed when the page loads.
• Two different people share a phone number. Do not merge them. Record a different number in "WhatsApp (if different from phone)" for one of them, or keep the phone number on a single record.
• Merging is not offered. Your role lacks "Edit clients".