Suppose there's an account "Libin" with 'x' individual consultants and another account "Philip" with 'y' individual consultants.

I want to make them merge into a single account "Libin Philip" with 'x' + 'y' individual consultants. In a way, i want to bring 'x' and 'y' under a single account name without any change in their field data.

Is there any way, i can achieve this..?

Quote: Originally posted by Libin Suppose there's an account "Libin" with 'x' individual consultants and another account "Philip" with 'y' individual consultants. I want to make them merge into a single account "Libin Philip" with 'x' + 'y' individual consultants. In a way, i want to bring 'x' and 'y' under a single account name without any change in their field data.   Is there any way, i can achieve this..?

What do you mean by 'consultants'?

Accounts can be merged (if you have appropriate privileges within the system - DELETE ACCOUNT needed) by selecting them in list view, right-clicking and selecting merge. This does not preserve all data though - the single-occurrence data (Account phone number, for example) remains as single occurrence, so some data is discarded.

I noticed that you have put this in the imports forum - are you trying to do this merge as part of an import?

There is a built-in merge feature in the SalesLogix Client to do this.  The user has to have rights for it to work.  I DO NOT recommend giving anyone this ability as it can be very destructive if the person is not careful.  Many times they think they are doing everyone a favor when in fact they are creating headaches that are not easily fixed.

The Admin user has rights to do this.  In the client go to the Account list view or do a search that will show both accounts you want to merge in the list view.  Highlight both accounts (click on the one account then CTRL-Click on the second and third, fourth, etc.) and then right-click one of the highlighted accounts.  A pop-up menu will appear.  Click "Merge Records" located at the bottom.  Read the instructions on the "Selected Record Confirmation" screen.  It's not clearly written, but to change the "Primary" to "Merge", "Ignore", "Delete" or something else you have to right-click the record in the list.

This type of function is part of data cleansing and there are ways of merging accounts (or contacts) based on a field value.  I DO NOT recommend doing this as it can cause many more problems than it's worth.  It's better and easier to do merge as you see it.

After two or more accounts are merged the bulk of the work - contacts, history, opportunities, etc - are merged into the one primary account.  You will have to do some cleanup.  In your example, the account name "Libin" and "Philip" would NOT be combined to create "Libin Philip".  The account name of the Primary merge account will be the account name.  So if the "Libin" account was the primary that is what the final merged account would be named.  You will have to edit it to read "Libin Philip".

Another issue with merging accounts has to do with open opportunities.  I don't quite remember exactly what the issue was.  I think it might have been that an open opportunity account manager would change to the Primary merge account account manager.  In many cases this is not what you want to happen.  The opportunity account manager can differ from the account account manager and this should be preserved but it is not.

John

I guess I confused with the word 'consultants'.

What i meant is that, there are two accounts with x and y contacts, and i want to put them together in a single account with combined name (THis sounds cool, i hope :D).

The answers from you both are covincing but i wish to know more on the 'bad sides' of the merge.

And thanks to you both for the prompt response.

As John mentioned, the "bad sides" of Account or Contact Merging is the possibility of data loss.  For instance, say you're merging two accounts and both have data for the MainPhone field.  The MainPhone of the PRIMARY account is kept, while the other's MainPhone data is lost.

Another one of the problems my company runs into is "lost" accounts.  A salesman works on an account one day and comes to work the next day to find his account is gone!  In fact, the account has only been merged with another.  However, trying to determine where that account was merged is a difficult task.  The guys on here can correct me, but as far as I know there is no built-in logging of Record Merging in SalesLogix.  We implemented our own logging system as a workaround, but it's imperfect.

"Lost" accounts is similar to what happens when open opportunities are merged from multiple accounts into one account that have different account managers.  The opportunities are lost but are in fact assigned to a different account manager.

For reasons such as this is why I recommend only certain people who know the data and know it well do merges.  Do them one at a time and check the data after the merge to verify everything.  Once you get used to how a merges works you will also become familiar with the quirks that come along with it.  This helps make the process a little easier but not foolproof. 

Merges are always best done by merging new data [type = MERGE] into old data [type = PRIMARY] because the oldest is usually the most relavent - but not always.

John