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How to merge duplicate companies or suppliers

Combine duplicate client or supplier records into one kept company, and see what moves, what stays, and which permissions you need.

Written by Ben Walker

Use this when the same client or supplier has been entered more than once and you want one kept record. Open the company or supplier you want to keep, then merge the duplicates into it.

Merge duplicates

  1. Open the company or supplier you want to keep (the one that should remain after the merge).

  2. Choose Merge Companies on a company page, or Merge Suppliers on a supplier page. Both open the same merge modal.

  3. In the modal, search for and select each duplicate to merge into the current record. Use + Include another company (wording follows your account’s company name setting) to add more rows.

  4. Confirm the merge. While it runs, the button shows a spinner and Merging.... If something goes wrong, the modal stays open with the error and your selected rows so you can fix and try again.

What moves to the kept company

  • Projects and opportunities linked as client, invoice-to, or referrer (including deleted ones)

  • Contracts where the duplicate is the primary contractor

  • Invoices that are not yet approved and not synced to finance

  • Costs, purchase orders, expense claim items and staff credit cards. An expense claim item and its costs move together only when none of them is already synced to finance

What does not move

  • Contacts, addresses, notes, custom fields and the finance link (finance_id)

  • Records already synced to Xero, MYOB or QuickBooks stay on the duplicate. That includes approved or synced invoices, synced bills, synced purchase orders and synced expense bank transactions

After the merge

  • Duplicates are soft-deleted (discarded/archived). They are never destroyed.

  • The kept company can become both (client and supplier) when a client side and a supplier side are brought together. It may also get client status and a client number or code when it becomes a project’s client, the same way creating a project does.

  • You cannot newly link a project to a discarded company as client, invoice-to or referrer. Existing links on already-linked projects can still be edited.

Permissions

Merging needs both Update Companies and Delete Companies on your role. See Drum Permissions.

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