In a hypothetical company, one buyer calls, submits a form and messages a salesperson. CRM now has three “new customers.” Marketing seems to have won—until two employees send different proposals.
Start cleaning the database with rules. Otherwise, the merge button merely speeds up the disorder.
Agree what counts as a duplicate
Bitrix24 can find repeated data such as phone numbers or email addresses. The setting is described in the CRM guide. A match warrants investigation; deciding whether records represent the same customer requires context.
A company’s shared phone number may belong to several contacts. Another purchase by the same person may be a separate deal. Distinguish the customer, contact and enquiry: they serve different purposes.
Review a small sample
Take several suspicious pairs and check:
- name, organisation and contact information;
- communication history and active deals;
- owners and outstanding agreements;
- information that must be preserved.
Before merging, identify the primary record and expected outcome. Test an approved sample, then confirm employees can access the necessary information. Check supported entities, merging methods and automatic-mode conditions in your portal.
If the outcome is unclear, do not run a bulk operation just in case. Agree data preservation and recovery procedures with the administrator first.
Remove the source of repetition
Trace how customers enter CRM from forms, telephony or external systems. For every connection, ask how it finds an existing customer before creating a new one.
Test repeated form submissions and different formats of the same number. Document how ambiguous matches are handled so each salesperson does not invent a separate rule.
Discuss a Bitrix24 audit with QQDev, bringing a few duplicate examples and your source list. This helps tackle the cause rather than giving the database a monthly spring clean.