Retail and Commerce: Merging Duplicate Customer Accounts in Dynamics 365

Dynamics 365 has standard functionality to merge duplicate customers in the Retail and Commerce module! There is a bit of manual work to complete before the magic happens, so let’s get started.

First an export of all customer records will need to be created. Then the file will need to be examined for duplicates. Look for similar customer names, telephone numbers and address. A business decision is needed to define the criteria for the duplicate records, as once the merge occurs, the duplicate account will no longer be available for new sales orders. As a suggestion, in your Excel file, remove the rows without duplicates and mark the duplicate accounts with the same row color or cut and paste into a new sheet so the accounts are sequential rows. Once you have decided which customer accounts are duplicates, add a column to your Excel document to note which account will be selected as primary. The primary customer account will be used going forward in D365 once the merge is complete.

SPECIAL NOTE: If needed, the existing customer accounts could be updated in D365 to ensure a duplicate is found, like changing the phone number format from XXX.XXX.XXXX to (XXX) XXX-XXXX or updating an abbreviated name to the full name.

Now for the best part! Use the following steps to merge the duplicate accounts in D365 Retail and Commerce:

1. Open Retail and Commerce > Customers > Customer service
2. Change the Customer Search option from Keyword to the common criteria in both customer accounts. Your available options are: Keyword, Sales order, Purchase order, Phone number, Customer account, Customer name, Email address, Check number, RMA number, Invoice, Business account, Loyalty card
3. Enter the criteria and click search

Only two accounts can be merged at one time. Select the primary and one secondary accounts in the Customer Search screen, then click Merge

If needed, click the Switch option in the Merging customers screen to ensure the primary account is selected for the Merge to Customer account – click Merge to complete.

Click OK to confirm the process to merge the customer accounts.

1. Repeat steps 1 to 6 for all duplicate accounts.
2. Confirm the accounts were merged.
   1. Open Retail and Commerce > Customers > All customers
   1. Open the Filters – change the Customer account search to ‘is one of’
   1. Add the duplicate customer accounts and click apply

How easy was that? You may be asking yourself, “Why are there duplicate accounts in the first place?”. There could be a few ways this happens like typos (we are human after all!), abbreviations were used in place of the full name, different nomenclature, etc. A great way to solve this dilemma is to create standard work instructions for your employees to follow, or just call the great people of Ellipse Solutions and we can help with your Dynamics 365 solutions.