How can I prevent duplicate contacts on Xero if two customers have the same name?
When an order is created for a new customer, Reconcile.ly can create a new contact in Xero for this customer. By default, we include a unique identifier number to the contact name to reduce the risk of duplicated contacts. That solves this particular problem.
This results in contact names including a string of text that looks something like (shopify_2845292724335), which is the identifying number of the Shopify customer.
While unsightly, it helps avoid duplicates. Disabling this can cause matching issues if you have those same customers being created manually or with another app.
However, from the Reconcile.ly settings, you can toggle this additional customer_id from being added to the contact name.
Since now each Xero contact has a unique ID, this shouldn't be an issue as we target customers by their ID, not their name.
You can access this new setting in Order Settings.
Note: The setting to assign or not the contact ID, is only available if you've configured Reconcilely to create or use a new contact for each Shopify customer.
This results in contact names including a string of text that looks something like (shopify_2845292724335), which is the identifying number of the Shopify customer.
While unsightly, it helps avoid duplicates. Disabling this can cause matching issues if you have those same customers being created manually or with another app.
However, from the Reconcile.ly settings, you can toggle this additional customer_id from being added to the contact name.
Since now each Xero contact has a unique ID, this shouldn't be an issue as we target customers by their ID, not their name.
You can access this new setting in Order Settings.
Note: The setting to assign or not the contact ID, is only available if you've configured Reconcilely to create or use a new contact for each Shopify customer.
Updated on: 18/08/2022
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