How to Create a Duplicate Account or Contact Report

Creating a duplicate report can help you discover duplicate records in your system based on pre-defined matching criteria, such as exact email matching or similar contact/account name matching. This guide will help you create a new duplicate report type as well as create a custom report to surface these instances and compare them appropriately.

Pre-requisite:

1. The user must be a Salesforce Administrator or have the ‘Manage Custom Report Types’ permission.

Creating a Duplicate Report Type:

1. Navigate to the gear icon in the upper right corner of the page and select Setup. 
2. In the quick find box, search for “Report Types” and select the result. 
3. On the Report Types page, you can verify currently created report types or add a new type via the “New Custom Report Type” at the top of the table. 
4. On the resulting screen, select your primary object. This will be the object you are attempting to identify duplicates with (Usually Account or Contact). Provide a Report Type Label (Report Type Name will generally be created for you after this field has been populated), provide a description and a location that you would like to store the report type under. Lastly, you will update the deployment status to Deployed and select ‘Next’. 
5. Click on the box beneath your primary object to create an object relationship and select “Duplicate Record Items”. Click ‘Save’. 

6. Your newly created report type will now be available when creating a new report. 

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Creating a Duplicate Report: 

1. Navigate to the Reports tab and select “New Report”. 
2. Select the Category of “All” and search for the duplicate report you created within the report type search field. Select the applicable report type for either a contact duplicate report or an account duplicate report and start the report.

3. On the resulting page, add fields/columns as needed for proper comparison. 
4. Duplicate groupings can be created by adding the “Duplicate Record Set: Duplicate Record Set Name” field to the Group Rows section. 

5. ‘Save and Run’ your report to compare duplicate records.

Note: If you need to merge the records, reference our How to Merge Accounts or How to Merge Contacts articles.