Match records in data sync

Matching records accurately in a data sync is important to ensure your records are up-to-date in both your HubSpot account and your third-party app. There are three ways to match records in a data sync:

• Default settings
• Choose your fields
• Do no matching

Please note: the above options are not available for every data sync app or object. 

To select which method to match your records with:

• In your HubSpot account, navigate to Data Management > Integrations.
• Click a data sync app. 
• Click [object] sync. 
• On the Configure tab, navigate to the Record matching section. 

Default settings

With default settings, the following properties are used to match records in data sync:

• Contacts or Leads: Email address
• Companies: Company name and/or Company Domain Name
• Products: SKU or Name. 

For example, if you have products with different names but the same SKU in your HubSpot account and your other app, you can use the SKU to match records to ensure consistency and accuracy. 

Matching happens separately from any field mappings or filters that you have set up. For example, if you choose to match products based on their SKU and turn off the SKU field mapping, records will still be matched using the SKU property. 

Choose your own fields to match on

With this option, you can select which properties should be used as the identifier for matching records. For example, you can choose any field from your other app to map with any property in HubSpot. This gives you more control over the sync.

HubSpot will use only the selected property to match records, which can result in records not matching as expected.

For example, if you choose the Website URL property to match records in a company sync instead of using the default Company Domain Name property:

• It can make companies with different Company Domain Name properties match because they have the same Website URL property. In this case, choose the app in the Data conflict resolution section that will replace the other and decide which information is kept. 
• It can also cause companies with the same Company Domain Name but different values for Website URL to not match, and thus cause a seeming duplicate. This is because the sync relies on matching to decide if a new record should be created. 

Please note: if you select this option, it will only apply to records that have not been matched yet. 

Matching Identifier Clarification

You must review HubSpot and your other app to decide which shared properties to use for data sync to pair records. Once records are paired, data sync relies on the record IDs to maintain a live sync.

• When a match is found based on the chosen property: the sync won't create a new record on the other side. Instead, it'll create a pairing between these two distinct record IDs (storing that pair of record IDs) and maintain synchronization of these records moving forward.
• When no match is found: the sync will create a new record on the other side. Data sync will store the record ID of the newly created record (paired to the initial record ID), and maintain a sync of these records moving forward.

Therefore, you should only choose a record ID as a matching identifier if you've already synced those respective record IDs to the other app. This would then make them a shared property.

Do no matching

This setting prevents HubSpot from doing any matching of records. Depending on the sync direction, all records will sync from HubSpot into the other app, or vice versa. This sync takes into account filters set up on the Limit screen of the sync. 

This setting is recommended if you want to do an initial sync of all data from one app to another. This will allow duplicate records to sync and no merging of records will occur. If you already have records in both HubSpot and your other app, this may cause record syncs to fail. For example, HubSpot will prevent records with the same email address from syncing with each other. 

Duplicate prevention

To prevent duplicate records from syncing into your HubSpot account or your other app, it is recommended to set up filters in your data sync configuration. Filters limit which records are included in the sync. You can set up filters on the Limit screen, in the Filters section. Review how to set up filters here.