Candidate/Client/Contact > Overview

You can merge two records into one in Recruit So Simple. The most common reason for doing this would be in the case of duplicate records being added to the system. For example, you may have multiple candidate records who are actually the same person, but have been mistakenly added to the system more than once.

To merge two records, view either of the records and click the Merge button at the top of the Overview screen. You will then be asked to specify the record you wish to merge with.

The next screen will ask you which of the two records should be kept and explain which information will be merged and which will be discarded.

If you are merging duplicate clients and they also have duplicate contacts, you should merge the contacts one at a time first, before merging the clients.

Which Record To Keep?

At the end of the merging process, one of the records will remain and the other will be deleted. The remaining record will contain the merged data.

The Merge screen shows the list of information that will be merged or discarded. It is important to note that not all of the information on each record will be merged.

Generally, you should choose to keep the record with the most up to date and complete information. The important thing to consider is the information that will be discarded. Look at the list of information that is going to be discarded and decide if you need to manually add this to the record that is going to be kept, before merging.

Additional Information

By default, all documents from both records will be kept and will exist on the final merged record. Any documents that came from the discarded record will have a note added, “(From merged record)“. If you know that the documents on both records are the same, you should select the option Discard Doucments which will ensure that only the documents from the record that you’re keeping will exist on the final merged record.

When merging candidates, the two cannot both be listed for the same vacancy. If they are, you must remove one of them from the relevant vacancy’s pipeline before doing the merge. This is because each of the pipeline listings contains data that can’t be combined automatically. The merge tool will list any such vacancies so you can do this.

Merging Rules

There are rules that the system uses when merging certain information between the records, the following list explains these. If any of the information below is listed on both of the records that you’re merging, then we recommend that you’re aware of these rules.

Candidates:

• Employment history – If an entry on both candidates has an identical Date, Company and Job Title then it is considered to be the same entry and is ignored, i.e. none of the fields in the entry will be updated.
• Employment history – If both candidates have an entry that is set as Current then the entry on the candidate that is being discarded must have a newer From Date for this to be set as Current on the final merged record. Note that even if this isn’t the case, the entry will still be merged but will just not be set as Current.
• References – Only the Name field is used to decide if an entry is the same on both candidates.
• CVs – If the option to Discard Documents is not set, all of the documents on both records will exist on the final merged candidate. However, if the candidate being kept already has a CV of the same type (i.e. original or agency) that also exists on the candidate being discarded then the original/agency CV flag will be unset on the document from the discarded candidate.

Clients:

• Sites –  These will be treated as the same on both clients if the Name, Address Line 1 and Phone are identical (or blank on the client that is being discarded). Sites that are the same will not be merged, but if these sites have any contacts or vacancies assigned to them then these will be re-assigned to the corresponding site on the client being kept. Because of this, it is recommended to double-check the sites on both clients beforehand to ensure that the details are not identical if the sites are actually different. Otherwise, you may end up with contacts or vacancies on the final merged client that are assigned to incorrect sites.
• Contacts – The contacts from both client records will exist on the final merged client (even if they are are duplicates and have the same names). If you are merging duplicate clients and they also have duplicate contacts, you should merge the contacts one at a time first, before merging the clients.

Contacts:

• Vacancies – If the contact being discarded has any vacancies that are assigned to it, they will be re-assigned to the contact being kept, but only if both contacts are from the same client. Otherwise, the vacancies that were assigned to the contact being discarded will have their Contact field unset.