Merging Accounts in Salesforce: What You Need to Know

A person can only merge accounts if he or she is the account owner, an administrator, or a user above the owner of the account in the role hierarchy and he or she must have the appropriate user permission. Basically, when a person is merging accounts in Salesforce which they do not own, he or she should have “Delete” permissions on the accounts as well as “Edit” permissions on cases and opportunities. The “Delete” account is required since the person will be deleting one of the accounts when they will be performing an account merge. “Edit” permission is required on cases and opportunities since changing the account name filed i.e. AccountID can edit any cases or opportunities which are associated with the account that a person is merging.

 

Merging Accounts in Salesforce

Here are the various tips you can use to merge accounts in Salesforce

Tip#1: Visiting the “Accounts” Tab: First and foremost, you’ll have to visit the “Account” tab if you want to make the entire process successful. From the “Account” tab, you’re supposed to click “Merge Accounts” in the tool part so that you can be in a position to move to the next process.   Tip#2: Finding the Duplicate Accounts: In order for you to find the duplicate accounts, you’ll be asked for a search string. Basically, a string is simply a line of text which consists of one or more characters. When merging accounts in Salesforce, Wildcard* is often permitted. Therefore, searching for “Conglo” will find “Conglomco” and “Conglomo” simultaneously, and so on.   Tip#3: Selecting the Results you Wish to Merge: Select up to three results that you want to merge. Note that you can only merge three results at a time before you click “Next”.   Tip#4: Selecting the “master Record” Account: The “master Record” account will be the one which will essentially absorb all the other accounts, and persist when these accounts absorb are gone. Generally, all data that is taken from the other accounts will exist in once the merging process is over.   Tip#5: Selecting the Fields you Want Taken form the Other Accounts: Salesforce will definitely allow you to choose the fields that you wish to be taken from the other accounts. This is ideal since it will not create room for redundancies and overwrites in the “Master Record”.   Tip#6: Completing the Process:

Click “Merge” in order to complete the merging process.

Generally, in case more duplicates happen to exist, it is ideal that you repeat the process till they’re all consolidated into only one solid account record. It’s always recommended that you always try to be careful each and every time you’re selecting the “Master Account” and the various fields you may wish to copy over.

  As you’ve seen, merging accounts in Salesforce is not that hard. All you need to do when you want to merge accounts in Salesforce is putting the aforementioned tips into consideration, looking for the other Salesforce tips and tricks as well as looking for Salesforce basics.   Last but not the least, ensure that you also look for Salesforce video tutorials if you in deed what to become an expert on the subject discussed on this write up. Make sure that you put these tips into consideration when merging accounts in Salesforce and get to experience the effectiveness they offer.
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Amanda is the Lead Author & Editor of Rainforce Blog. Amanda established the Rainforce blog to create a source for news and discussion about some of the issues, challenges, news, and ideas relating to Salesforce usage.