Review and manage duplicate records

Use the duplicates manager tool to identify, review, and resolve duplicate contact and company records in your CRM. HubSpot automatically compares record property values daily to surface potential duplicates, so your team works from accurate, up-to-date data. You can merge or reject pairs individually or in bulk, and create custom rules to define your own matching criteria. In this article, learn how to review duplicate records, take action on duplicate pairs, manage custom rules, and export merge history.

If you already know the records you want to merge, learn how to merge individual records. Learn more about what happens when you merge contacts or companies.

Before you get started

For example, a user with Edit permissions set to All Contacts but None for companies can only manage contact duplicates. 

Manually review potential duplicate contacts and companies

By default, HubSpot identifies potential duplicates by comparing record property values for the following properties:

• Contacts: First Name, Last Name, Email address, IP country, Phone number, Zip Code, and Company Name.
• Companies: Company Domain Name, Company Name, Country/Region, Phone Number, and Industry.

HubSpot automatically calculates results as new contacts and companies are created. It will also check once daily if no records are created on that specific day.

Review duplicates and customize the table

To review duplicate contacts or companies:

1. Navigate to contacts or companies:
   
   • Contacts: In your HubSpot account, click More, then navigate to CRM > Contacts. If More doesn't appear in your account, navigate to CRM > Contacts directly.
   • Companies: In your HubSpot account, click More, then navigate to CRM > Companies. If More doesn't appear in your account, navigate to CRM > Companies directly.
2. In the upper right, click Actions, then select Manage duplicates.
3. In the Manage Duplicates section, select the name of the rule for which you want to review potential duplicates.
4. View a table of duplicate contact or company pairs for your review. You can also view when the most recent duplicates were identified.

Please note: above the table, Last checked for duplicates on [date] refers to the last time a duplicate was identified by a scan.

1. Navigate to the manage duplicates tool.
2. Click the name of a custom rule, if desired.
3. On a column header, click the verticalMenuIcon three vertical dots icon, then select Add column or Remove column.
4. In the pop-up box, select the property you want to add. Added properties display as columns for additional detail when reviewing duplicate records. 
5. Click the property dropdown menus above the table, then select criteria to filter the records:
   • Owner: the HubSpot user who owns the records.
   • Create date: the date range in which the records were created. 
   • Similarity (BETA): the similarity score assigned to the records by the duplicate model. Contact property data points contain higher degrees of variance compared to company properties. This results in more similarity options (e.g., 30% and up) so you can review potential duplicate contacts that aren't immediately identifiable. Operations managers in an account enrolled in the Duplicate Similarity Score public beta can filter by similarity.
   • Last activity date: the date range in which the most recent activity was logged to the records. Learn more about the activities that update this property.
   • Discovered date: the date the potential duplicate was found.
   • Lifecycle stage: the point at which the record is in your buyer journey. Learn more about the lifecycle stage property.

Take action on potential duplicates using the default rule

1. Navigate to the manage duplicates tool.
2. In the Manage Duplicates table, click Review next to a pair of contacts or companies to focus on a single pair of possible duplicates.
3. In the dialog box, compare the properties of the two records.
4. To change which properties are displayed when comparing the records:
   • Click Set properties to review, then select the checkboxes next to the desired properties. 
   • Click Save when you're done.
5. To merge individual record pairs:
   • Select the contact/company you want to keep.
   • Select the contact/company properties you want to keep from each record. Learn more about the properties kept by default when merging records.
   • When you're done, click Merge and review next.
     
6. To reject individual record pairs:
   • Review the records.
   • Click Reject and review next. Rejected suggestions won't appear in the duplicates tool moving forward.

7. To merge duplicate records in bulk:
   • Select the checkboxes next to the desired records.
   • At the top of the table, click Review.
   • In the dialog box, click the Merge criteria dropdown menu, then select an option that decides how the records are merged:
     • Most recent engagement: all selected records will be merged into the record with the most recent value for the Last Engagement date property. Engagements that impact this property include interactions with website pages, forms, documents, meetings link, or tracked one-to-one emails.
     • Oldest engagement: all selected records will be merged into the record with the oldest value for the Last Engagement date property.
     • Created first: all selected records will be merged into the oldest record based on the Create date property.
     • Created last: all selected records will be merged into the newest record based on the Create date property.
     • Most recently updated: all selected records will be merged into the record with the most recent property value update. All properties, including hidden internal HubSpot properties, are evaluated.
   • Click Merge all.
     

8. To reject duplicate suggestions in bulk:

   • Select the checkboxes next to the desired records.

   • At the top of the table, click Reject. The records will be removed from the table and will not appear as a suggestion moving forward.

   Please note: if a record from a previously rejected suggestion is merged into another record, it could reappear in the duplicates tool.

Take action on potential duplicates using a custom rule

1. Navigate to the manage duplicates tool.
2. In the Manage Duplicates section, click the name of the custom rule.
3. To merge records manually:
   • On a desired record, click Review.
   • Set properties to review, if desired.
   • In each column, click the property value you want to keep for the final record. Selected properties are highlighted in green.
   • In the top right, click Merge.
     
4. To merge records in bulk:
   • On a desired record, click Review.
   • Click the Merged by dropdown menu and select a criterion.
   • In the top right, click Merge.
5. To reject records individually:
   • On a desired record, click the rightIcon expand duplicate group icon.
   • Click Reject on any records you want to dismiss. 
     
6. To reject records in bulk:
   • Select the checkboxes next to the record you want to dismiss.
   • At the top of the table, click Reject.

Undo a rejected duplicate pair

Roll back rejected duplicate pairs up to 14 days after the pair was rejected. Records won't appear in the undo list if you make property value or other changes to the records during the 14-day period.

1. Navigate to the manage duplicates tool.
2. In the upper right of the Manage Duplicates section, click View history.
3. On the desired record pair, click Undo.

Manage custom duplicate rules

Set up custom criteria that HubSpot will use to find duplicate records. Create up to two rules per object and use up to nine properties for comparison.

To configure a custom rule:

1. In your HubSpot account, click More, then navigate to Data Management > Data Quality. If More doesn't appear in your account, navigate to Data Management > Data Quality directly.
2. Click the Manage Duplicates tab.
3. Click the name of the object for which you want to create the custom rule.
4. In the Manage Duplicates section, click Add new rule, then select Create custom rule.
5. In the right panel: 
   • In the Name rule text field, enter a name.
   • Click the Select properties dropdown menu and select properties.

• • When you're finished, click View duplicates. You'll be brought to the custom rule tab and HubSpot will start scanning for duplicates using the rule criteria.

To edit a custom rule:

1. In your HubSpot account, click More, then navigate to Data Management > Data Quality. If More doesn't appear in your account, navigate to Data Management > Data Quality directly.
2. Click the Manage Duplicates tab.
3. Click the name of the object for which you want to edit the custom rule.
4. In the Manage Duplicates section, click the name of the custom rule.
5. In the Duplicate detection section, click Edit.
6. When you're finished, click See duplicates.

To delete a custom rule:

1. In your HubSpot account, click More, then navigate to Data Management > Data Quality. If More doesn't appear in your account, navigate to Data Management > Data Quality directly.
2. Click the Manage Duplicates tab.
3. Click the name of the object for which you want to edit the custom rule.
4. In the Manage Duplicates section, click the name of the custom rule.
5. In the Duplicate detection section, click Edit.
6. Click Delete rule.

View an audit log for duplicate management

View an audit log sharing information about recently auto-merged records and rejected suggestions. This helps you better track automated actions taken by the system, without surfacing manually merged records.

1. In your HubSpot account, click More, then navigate to Data Management > Data Quality. If More doesn't appear in your account, navigate to Data Management > Data Quality directly.
2. Click the Manage Duplicates tab.
3. Click Actions, then click Export merge history to access the audit log.