How To Merge Accounts In Salesforce

How To Merge Accounts In Salesforce

Salesforce is a wonderful tool to help you run your business, but sometimes you need to merge accounts within it, and this isn’t a one-click process. Fortunately, there’s only six steps and they are outlined in the following paragraphs.

Before you can merge accounts in Salesforce, there are several user permissions that are needed. In order to view the necessary accounts, make sure that accounts are set to “Read.” You also need user permission to “Delete” any accounts for merging business accounts. To merge a personal account, you need “Delete” set on accounts, as well as “Read” on contacts.

Merge Accounts In Salesforce Tutorial

Once the permissions are set, you can get started with the six steps of merging Salesforce accounts. Go to the Accounts tab. Then find the Tools section. There’s an option for Merge Accounts, and you want to click this option.

A search query will come up, and you need to input a search string so that you can locate the accounts that are duplicates of one another. It’s good to use an asterisk after your search term. If you search for “tool*”, you’ll find all businesses or accounts that have Tool, Tools and even Tooling in the name.

Once you see the search results that you need, you can check up to three rows at once for merging. Once done, click on Next.

Choose only one single account to be the new Master Record. Many accounts have hidden data and information in read-only fields. Choosing one as the Master Record will keep its data over the others for the new merged account.

You have more control here if you have the “Edit Read-Only Fields” permission enabled, which lets you have manual choices over which fields get kept. Keep in mind that hidden fields do get displayed visually while merging.

Make your choices about which particular fields get kept from the chosen records. If any of the available data conflicts, left-column fields are automatically preselected, and the row shows up as the color blue.

Once satisfied with all your choices, click on the button that says Merge to complete the entire process.

Even though this is the process for merging accounts in Salesforce, it is not available to everyone. You not only have to personally have the needed user permissions, you also need to be an administrator, the actual account holder, or someone above the account holder within the logistical pyramid.

Also keep in mind that items related to all duplicate accounts wind up having a new association with the merged account created from this process. If there are duplicate records, the discarded items wind up in the Recycle Bin.

Merged accounts retain the “created by” dates that is associated with the oldest of the merged accounts. The actual merge accounts in Salesforce date is indicated by the “modified by” date instead.

With the process outlined in this article and the notes associated with it, you should be able to now merge accounts in Salesforce, the next time you need to collate duplicate accounts together.