When multiple employees enter records in a NetSuite account or when large amounts of records are imported, you run the very real risk of creating duplicate records. And duplicate records will clog up your NetSuite account, obscure relationships between records, and limit appropriate communication. The NetSuite Duplicate Detection & Merge feature helps to resolve these problems by flagging possible duplicate records and allowing you to easily remove or merge duplicate records into a single master record. Let’s take a look at how to set up and use this feature in NetSuite. 

Setting Up NetSuite Duplicate Detection & Merge

To turn on the Duplicate Detection & Merge feature, you’ll need to log in as the Administrator and navigate to the Data Management section of the Company tab in Enable Features. 

Once this feature has been turned on, it will be able to flag possible duplicates for four types of records: Customer, Vendor, Partner, and Contact. The Administrator, however, gets to decide the criteria that would identify duplicates within these record types on the Duplicate Detection page. To access this page, navigate to Setup > Company > Company Management > Duplicate Detection. 

On this page, you can tell NetSuite to detect duplicates across subsidiaries. Notice, however, that this is only an option for Customer and Vendor records. Similar Contact and Partner records cannot be merged across multiple subsidiaries. On the rest of the Duplicate Detection page, you will select a checkbox next to each of the four record types that you wish for NetSuite to detect duplicates on. And for each record type, you can enter the specific fields that NetSuite will use to determine matches. 

When NetSuite checks for duplicates, it will look for a match on all the criteria you set. In other words, if you set Last Name, Email, and Phone as the duplicate criteria for Customer records, all of those fields would need to match (or at least, be very similar) on two Customer records in order for NetSuite to identify them as duplicates. 

Using NetSuite Duplicate Detection & Merge

Once Duplicate Detection & Merge is set up, how does the feature affect regular functions? 

Duplicate Notifications

After you choose your preferred duplicate criteria, NetSuite will begin to check for duplicates and alert you to possible duplicates. There are several ways that NetSuite will notify you about duplicates. First, when you are accessing a record that may have duplicates, NetSuite will display a banner across the top of the record. 

A similar banner will also display when you are creating a new record that has the potential to be a duplicate record. And if you are adding a potential duplicate record via the Quick Add option on record lists, a popup window will alert you to the other records that may be duplicates. 

Resolving Duplicates

When you see a banner at the top of a record informing you that it may contain duplicates, you can select the link on the banner to get to the Manage Duplicates page for that record type. For example, if you are viewing a customer record, then the link will take you to the Manage Customer Duplicates page. You can also access this page without using a link by navigating to Lists > Mass Update > Entity Duplicate Resolution. 

On this page, you’ll see all the records that NetSuite has flagged as possible duplicates. Using the checkbox options to the right of the flagged records, you can mark a record as being the primary record and mark other records as being either duplicates or not duplicates. When you submit your selections, NetSuite will make the changes you designated. 

Duplicate Entity Management

Who can resolve duplicate records? Obviously anyone with the Administrator role would be able to do this, but in many cases a company would want to empower other individuals to handle duplicate management. To allow a role to manage duplicates, you would just need to add the Duplicate Entity Management permission to that role on the Role record.

Duplicate Detection on CSV Imports

When records are imported into NetSuite using a CSV import, there is a high risk of importing duplicates. If you are importing records to any one of the four record types that are eligible for duplicate detection, you will have the option of selecting the checkbox Prevent Duplicate Records. This option is located under the Advanced Options list on the Import Options section of the Import Assistant. Selecting this checkbox ensures that duplicates will be discarded during the import process. 

However, you may prefer to leave this box unchecked. Then, when NetSuite detects duplicates, those records will still be created and and will be flagged as possible duplicates in NetSuite. You would access the list of these potential duplicates in the usual way, by navigating to Lists > Mass Update > Entity Duplicate Resolution. This allows you to work through the potential duplicates on a case by case basis. 

Conclusion

The NetSuite Duplicate Detection & Merge feature ensures that your records stay well-organized and accurate. I trust this blog has been helpful for you! Before you leave, don’t forget to drop your name and email below to join our mailing list. We send out a single email each week with our most recent NetSuite blog, which is a simple way for you to keep growing in your knowledge of all things NetSuite. Joining the SuiteRep newsletter is the best way to ensure you never miss any of our NetSuite posts. See you there!