Account Merge

Within TCA model, the concept of Customer is separated into two layers: the Party layer
and the Account layer.
CRM applications are referring to the Party layer when they refer to Customer, other
applications, on the other hand, are considering to the Account layer, when they refer to
Customer

With the Merge Customer Utility, you have the ability to easily clean up your existing data and
consolidate multiple customer accounts as the need arises. Duplicate activity is eliminated by
combining current duplicate accounts into one accurate account.


Why Required ?
Use Customer Merge to consolidate any duplicate customers or transfer site use activity from a
customer or site that is no longer active.
After the merge completes successfully, all activity that was previously associated with the old
customer or site is now associated with the new customer or site. Activity includes invoices,
debit memos, commitments, credits, receipts, adjustments, and chargebacks. The merge
process also checks for records in the AutoInvoice interface tables.

What is being merged?
You can either merge site uses for the same customer or all of the site uses for two different
customers.
Important: You can merge site uses only in the operating units that are on your access list.
Predefined site uses include Bill-to, Ship-to, Statements, Marketing, Legal, and Dunning. You
can only merge a bill-to site with a bill-to site, a ship-to site with a ship-to site and so on
whether you are merging different customers or two sites for the same customer.
You can also choose to either inactivate or delete your old customer and sites use information.
If you choose to delete the customer or site use information, then it is removed from the
database and the application does not maintain an audit trail of this data.
Note that you cannot directly delete a customer. You must use the Customer Merge process
with the Delete after Merge check box selected to merge your customer (called the From
Customer) to a dummy customer (called the To Customer). This process deletes the merged
(From) customer. If you are merging sites for the same customer, then you cannot choose to
delete the old customer information (since the customers are the same).

1. Merging Sites for the Same Customer
If a customer is closing one of its sites and there is activity assigned to this site, you can use
Customer Merge to transfer all activity from the old site to one of this customer's existing sites.
EXAMPLE:
For example, ACME currently has two bill-to sites, but they are planning to close one of these
locations. Customer Merge lets you transfer all of their activity from the site that will be closed
to their remaining open site.
Any predefined site uses or site uses that you defined in the Receivables Lookups window must
be merged with similar site uses. For example, you are merging two of Customer ABC's sites.
This customer has defined the following sites as described in this table:

Address Site Usage
Address1 Bill-to
Address1 Ship-to
Address2 Ship-to

In this example, you can only merge the ship-to site of Address1 with Address2 because they
are both ship-to sites of different addresses.
The diagrams below illustrate what happens when ACME closes one of its locations. Customer
Merge transfers all of ACME's activity from the site that is closed to the remaining open site.
Before the Merge

This picture shows ACME before the company closes a site and transfers all activity from the old
site to an existing site. Before the merge, ACME has two addresses: 255 Market and 38
Telegraph. The 255 Market address is both a bill-to and ship-to site and has one invoice against
both sites. The 38 Telegraph address is also a bill-to and ship-to site with one receipt against
the bill-to site.
The illustration shows how the merge program combines the two ship-to sites and the two bill-
to sites of the 255 Market and 38 Telegraph addresses, and transfers all activity from the site
that is closing (255 Market) to the existing site (38 Telegraph).








After the Merge

This above picture shows that there is no activity against ACME's 255 Market address after the
merge. Instead, the invoice that was previously against the 255 Market bill-to and ship-to sites
is now attached to the 38 Telegraph bill-to and ship-to sites. The receipt remains against the 38
Telegraph bill-to site.
Important: When merging two sites for the same customer, you cannot submit the merge if
Delete after Merge is set to Yes.

2. Merging Different Customers
When merging two different customers, you must merge all site uses associated with the
customer being merged.
EXAMPLE:
For example, ACME purchases Pacific Express and each has one bill-to site and one ship-to site.
You can transfer activity from Pacific Express to ACME by merging like site uses assigned to
Pacific Express (for example, Bill-to's merged with Bill-to's). The application automatically
associates all transaction activity and customer relationships with the new customer.
Customer Merge ensures that you inactivate or delete all site uses for the old customer; you
cannot inactivate some site uses and delete others. In addition, you must assign all of the old
customer site uses to one or more of the new customer's site uses. For example, you want to
merge the following customers that have sites as described in this table:


Customer ABC Customer XYZ
Address1 (bill-to) Address1 (bill-to)
Address2 (ship-to) Address1 (ship-to)
Address3 (statements)



You can merge the two addresses having Bill-to site use (Address 1's) and the two addressed
having Ship-to site use (Address 2's). However, you cannot merge Address 3 of Customer ABC,
which has a Statements site use, to Customer XYZ because Customer XYZ has no address with
the same site use. The only way you can merge these two customers is to copy Address 3 and
assign its site use to the merge-to customer (Customer XYZ) by selecting the Create Same Site
check box. The diagrams below illustrate what happens when ACME purchases Pacific Express.
Customer Merge transfers activity from Pacific Express to ACME by merging like site uses
assigned to Pacific Express.





Before the Merge


This illustration shows the sites and activity for Pacific Express and ACME, before you transfer
all activity from Pacific Express to ACME.
Before the merge, Pacific Express has two sites: 100 California and 55 Mission. The 100
California address is both a bill-to and ship-to site and has one invoice against both sites. The 55
Mission site is also a bill-to and ship-to site with one receipt against the bill-to site. ACME has
two sites: 255 Market and 28 Telegraph. Both of these sites are bill-to and ship-to sites. The
illustration shows how the merge program transfers activity from Pacific Express to ACME by
merging like site uses assigned to Pacific Express.
After the Merge

This illustration shows that there is no activity against Pacific Express after the merge. Instead,
the Pacific Express invoice against the 100 California bill-to and ship-to sites is now attached to
both the bill-to and ship-to sites of ACME's 255 Market address. The Pacific Express receipt
against the 55 Mission bill-to site is now attached to ACME's 38 Telegraph bill-to site.

Account Merge Impact
Inventory
The following information merges with the master account record:
Items demand and reservation information associated with a customer account
Record of every material transaction of a serialized unit in the inventory that is associated
with a customer account
Order Management
The following information transfers to the master account record:
Order header and header history information
Order header acknowledgment information
Order line details and history information
Order line acknowledgment information
Attachment rules of an order
Defaulting rules associated with the customer account or account sites
Processing constraint associated with the account or site
Holds defined to halt the processing of orders and returns
Ship tolerances for an item that is at the account or account site level
Sets for an order for shipping at site level

Payables
Payables stores the bank information related to the customer. When you merge customer
accounts, the bank accounts are transferred to the master customer account or account site
uses.
If the master customer account or account site use has more than one primary bank for the
same currency, the primary flag of the most recently updated customer account or site use is
cleared.
Purchasing
In purchasing, the following information is impacted when two customer accounts are merged:
For requisition lines sourced internally (Internal requisitions), the deliver to location is
updated to point to the location associated with the new Customer Account.
Receivables
The following information transfers to the master account record:
Record of the calls made for a past due customer account or transaction
Correspondence information such as account statements, dunning letters, and customer
calls available for an account
Consolidated billing invoice information associated with the duplicate customer account
Receipt information associated with the customer account
Information about any activity that occurs against an invoice, debit memo, chargeback,
credit memo, on-account credit, or receipt Invoice, debit memo, commitment, bills
receivable, and credit memo header information associated with the customer account
Transaction header and line information
Tax exemption details for either customer accounts and sites
Transactions present in the Auto Invoice interface tables
Receipts present in the Post batch interim tables
Credit request associated with the customer account
Case folder associated with the customer account
Transactions present in the summary tables and associated with the customer account