In this video, we will go over some common questions and “gotchas” when merging Accounts.
The Merge Accounts tool is on the Accounts tab, in the tools section
When searching for Accounts, make sure there is at least one identical word in each Account
name to pull up potential duplicates.
Accounts you may know to be duplicates but don’t contain the same word in the title
will not come up in a search.
If you have more than 3 accounts that need to be merged you should merge 3 at a time
until you have consolidated all the information into the one master account
The Account you select as the “Master” will automatically keep its data from any
hidden or read only fields such as Account Number or Account Site..
These fields won’t display during the merge process.
If you have the “edit read only fields” permission, however - you will be able to
select which Read Only field to keep (without it defaulting to the Master’s field)
When selecting Accounts to merge, keep in mind you will also need the appropriate permissions
- since you are essentially deleting all but the Master Account records:
To merge two or more Accounts, you will need to:
Be a System Administrator, or The account owner on all accounts, or
Be above the account owner in the role hierarchy Have Delete permission on the account object
or In addition, if you are not the Account owner,
you must have the “delete” permission for Accounts, and at least “edit” permissions
for Cases and Opportunities.
Any sharing rules, manual or otherwise, that applied to the Accounts prior to merge will
automatically be applied to the new Master Account.
If an Account has Account Team Members, there are a couple things to keep in mind as well:
The newly merged Account will contain all Account Team Members from all merged Accounts.
If you are not a System Administrator, you may not be able to merge the Accounts if one
of the Account Team Members has greater access to any of the related records (Accounts, Cases,
Opportunities).
In this case, you would need the “modify all data” permission to continue with the
merge.
If your organization has Person Accounts enabled, keep in mind that even if both Person and
Business Accounts come up in your search, you will not be able to merge these.
Business Accounts can only be merged with Business Accounts, and Person Accounts with
Person Accounts.
Additionally, if a Person Account has been enabled for the Customer Portal, it cannot
be merged at all - including with another Person Account.
If merging accounts associated with portal accounts make sure that you have the "Manage
Users" permission checked on your profile or permission set.
The associated contacts of portal accounts have to have the same portal type.
(i.e. customer portal with customer portal) Contacts access to specific portals doesn't
change regardless if they are associated to multiple portals.
If you need to merge a partner account with a non-partner account:
Make sure you set partner account to the master account and all portal contacts are associated
to the master account.
Partner accounts owners can not be changed When you merge accounts that have territories
manually assigned territories will be associated to the master account.
Territory Assignment rules will run only if the "Evaluate this account against territory
rules on save" is checked by default on the associated page layout.
Setting merged value of “Exclude from territory assignments” to true causes the following
to happen: Territory rules will not be run and existing
territory associations will be removed.
Territory rules only run if they are in an active state.
One final gotcha is that your newly merged Account’s “created date” will display
the created date of the oldest Account that was part of the merge, while the “last modified
date” will display at the merged date.
For more information, see the following topics in Salesforce Help
or visit the Salesforce Success Community at success dot salesforce dot com
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