Duplicate records create confusion. When the same person appears multiple times in your CRM, you lose visibility into the full relationship history. PipeLance helps you find, merge, and prevent duplicates so your data stays clean.
Finding duplicates
PipeLance identifies potential duplicates using multiple matching criteria:
- Exact email address matches
- Normalized email comparison (ignoring dots and plus signs)
- Same person with multiple email addresses at one company
- Contacts with identical company domains
- Similar names at the same domain
- Fuzzy matching for name variations (Bob vs Robert)
To view potential duplicates, go to Contacts and click "Find Duplicates" in the toolbar. PipeLance scans your database and groups likely matches together.
Duplicate detection alerts
PipeLance warns you before creating duplicates. When you add a contact manually or through an integration, the system checks for existing matches.
If a potential duplicate is found, you will see an alert with options to:
- View existing record - Open the potential match to compare
- Merge with existing - Combine the new data into the existing record
- Create anyway - Add as a separate record if it is a different person
These alerts prevent most duplicates from entering your system in the first place.
The merge flow
When you find duplicates that need to be combined, PipeLance walks you through a simple merge process.
Step 1: Select the primary record
Choose which record should be the "winner." This record keeps its ID and becomes the destination for merged data. Consider factors like which record has more activity history or more complete information.
Step 2: Review combined data
PipeLance shows you a preview of the merged record. For each field, you can choose which value to keep when the records have different data. The system suggests the most recent or most complete value, but you have final control.
Step 3: Confirm and merge
Click merge to combine the records. All activities, notes, emails, and calls from both records transfer to the primary record. The duplicate record is archived (not deleted) in case you need to undo the merge later.
Note: Merging cannot be undone automatically. If you need to reverse a merge, contact support within 30 days while the archived record still exists.
Bulk cleanup
When you have many duplicates to resolve, one-by-one merging takes too long. Bulk cleanup lets you process multiple duplicate sets at once.
From the Find Duplicates view:
- Review the suggested duplicate groups
- Check the groups you want to merge
- Choose your merge preferences (newest record wins, most complete wins, or manual selection)
- Click "Merge Selected" to process all checked groups
PipeLance processes bulk merges in the background. You will receive a notification when cleanup completes with a summary of merged records.
Prevention during import
The best way to handle duplicates is to prevent them during data imports. When you upload a CSV or connect an integration, PipeLance runs duplicate checking before creating records.
Import duplicate settings:
- Skip duplicates - Do not import records that match existing contacts
- Update existing - Merge imported data into matching records
- Create all - Import everything and handle duplicates later
For most imports, "Update existing" works best. It brings in new data while keeping your database clean.
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