Miscellaneous – Merging Records

As your client and partner databases grow, you may end up with duplicated or fragmented records for a single contact. This can happen when importing files with client data in them, accidentally entering separate records for the same partner, or even when the same information is submitted from multiple sources. Having multiple records for a single person can lead to problems in your marketing, so the BNTouch CRM has tools in place to prevent data duplication, check your databases for clients with similar personal information, and even to merge redundant records.

Your first defense against redundant client and partner files is making sure that information isn’t re-used between your records. If multiple client records have the same email address, for example, email-based marketing messages that are sent from your Campaigns tab could be sent to that person multiple times. This might lead to upset clients, spam reports to email carriers, compliance issues, and other problems if left uncorrected, so avoiding duplicate records is a prudent measure to take.

The first step, prevention, is taken care of for you by your BNTouch CRM. When entering information in a client or partner’s record, your system will let you know if the data you have entered matches that entered for other records in that database. In the alert, you will see a list of records that also have the entered information for that field, and you can click the blue “Name” link in the list to open those records.

When you are looking at contact information for your borrowers and partners, a red checkmark icon will appear in the text boxes of fields that have duplicated information. Watch for this icon, enter the correct information, and click the “Update” button to make sure your records are saved with unique information.

If you find multiple records with the same name in your Mortgages or Partnerships tabs, you can combine them into a single file using the “Merge” tool. Make sure to mark the checkboxes to the left of the “Name” field of the redundant records. Then, if you have selected only two records that are assigned to the same user, you can use the “Merge” button above the list to sync the information in both records into a single one. Please note that this “Merge” function should be used for combining duplicated records—not for making multiple loans for a single client. For help setting up such records, please check out our “Multiple-Loan Records” article or training video.

If you plan to keep one of these records and remove the other, be sure that the one you wish to keep is the top-most selection in the list when you click the “Merge” button. You will be able to choose data field information from either record when merging, but only the top-most record selected will keep uploaded documents, marketing campaign progress, connected loan participants, and other CRM elements. You can easily change which record appears above another in the record list by clicking a column header to reverse the sorting (for example, reversing the alphabetic order of the “Borrower Full Name” column).

You will be shown a list of the information for both records, and you can choose which record’s information will be kept in the new file using the radio buttons. You can use the “Select All” buttons at the top of the list to mark all subsequent fields for that record.

Once you have selected which data will be kept, you can choose where the selected data will be saved. You can opt to combine both files into a single record with the selected data, to copy the selected information and overwrite the information in both records to associate them with one contact, or to simply keep one record and remove the unselected one. Whichever option you choose will be carried out when you click the “Merge Records” button at the bottom of the page.

You can also take a proactive role in checking for redundant data using the “Duplicates Removal Tool” in your Options Tab. This will appear in the “Tools” column of your Options list.

Using this tool, you can choose to perform a search of your Mortgages, Partnerships, or Recruiting database for any records with duplicated information in any field. To learn more about performing this search and deleting copied records, please check out our “Duplicates Removal Tool” article or training video.