Deactivating, Merging, and Deleting Companies
You may wish to deactivate or remove companies in your system for several reasons, such as if a company were created by accident or if you realized you have a duplicate company in your system, and you want to merge the two records into one. There are multiple locations from which a company can be deactivated in the system, and there are also User Permissions and settings in place that determine whether companies can be deactivated, merged, or deleted.
Where Companies can be Deactivated
There are three locations in the site where companies can be deactivated. Depending on your User Permissions, and whether a company meets certain criteria, you may or may not be able to deactivate a company from these locations.
Company Overview Pages – When viewing an individual company record, you will see the ‘Deactivate’ action on the Company Overview tab. This action allows you to deactivate that individual company record and will also ask if you want to deactivate the company’s active contacts.
Company Search Page – On the Contacts & Companies search page, companies can be deactivated in bulk. To do this, run a search and use the checkboxes to select any companies you wish to deactivate. When at least one company is checked, you will see the ‘Update Selected Companies’ action show up above the results table. Click on that action to show a pop-up, where you can choose the ‘Deactivate’ option, and click Apply to deactivate all the companies you selected.
Note
You must have the ‘Bulk Company Changes’ User Permission to use this method of deactivation.
Duplicates Search Page – On the Contacts & Search Duplicates page, you can find any companies with identical names. If you find a duplicate, you can use the ‘x’ icon to deactivate the extra company record.
Note
You must have the ‘View All Contacts and Companies’ User Permission to access this page.
Once a company has been deactivated, it can be reactivated, left as inactive, merged with an active company, or permanently deleted. You can find inactive companies from the Company Search page by selecting the ‘Include Inactive Companies’ option for your search results.
What Determines if a Company can be Deactivated?
There are User Permissions that determine whether a specific user can deactivate companies. Additionally, if a company meets certain criteria, you may be unable to deactivate it, even with the required User Permissions.
If you are a rep on the company account, then you do not need any special permissions to deactivate the company.
To deactivate a company that you are not a rep on, you will need the User Permission ‘Edit Company Details.’ This permission allows you to view and edit company details even if you are not the rep on the account. With this permission, you can deactivate any company in the system, regardless of if you are a rep on the account or not.
Typically, companies with open invoices cannot be deactivated, unless you have the User Permission ‘Deactivate Companies with Open Invoices.’ When a user has this permission, they will be able to deactivate a company if it has an open invoice with no payments made.
Important
Any open invoices will still require payment, display in reports, and trigger reminders to your client. If you will be deactivating a company with open invoices, you should either close the invoices, or merge with another company.
If there is a partial payment on the invoice, you will be unable to deactivate the company even with this permission.
Deactivating companies with open invoices cannot be done from the Company Search page, by using the bulk ‘Update Selected Companies’ action. When deactivating companies with open invoices, we highly recommend closing the invoices or merging with another company. To prevent invoices from falling through the cracks, we only allow the deactivation of companies with open invoices on an individual company basis.
This permission also allows users to deactivate companies with an open cash account balance. Once again, you will not be able to deactivate a company by using the bulk deactivate action if it has an open cash account balance.
Tip
We recommend using the ‘Deactivate Companies with Open Invoices’ permission in conjunction with the permission ‘Merge Companies with Financial Transactions.’ Since we recommend merging deactivated companies with open invoices with another company, the workflow will be easiest if the user doing the deactivation is also able to merge the company.
What Determines if a Company can be Merged?
Once a company has been deactivated, it may be able to be merged with another active company. An example scenario would be if one rep created the company ‘Bartertown,’ and another rep created ‘Barter town.’ You have realized after the fact that they are the same company, and now you have two different records for one client.
To merge a company, it first must be inactive. Once it is inactive, a user can merge it with an active company if they have the User Permission ‘Merge Inactive Companies with Another Company.’
With this permission, on the Company Overview page, you will see the action ‘Merge with another Company.’ When clicked on, there will be a popup where you can enter the active company to be merged into.
Important
The inactive company that is being merged will be completely removed from the system. Any relevant data such as orders or dynamic attributes will be brought to the main company record.
You will need an additional User Permission to merge an inactive company if it has any invoices or payments. The sub-permission ‘Merge Companies with Financial Transactions’ allows for the merging of inactive companies with a financial history on the company record. When merged, the inactive company’s invoices and payments will be brought to the main company, and the inactive company will be removed from the system.
What Determines if a Company can be Deleted?
If you have a company record that you do not need, but you do not want to merge it with another company, then you may be able to delete it, which will completely remove it from the system. A company can be deleted once it has first been deactivated.
To permanently delete a company, you need the ‘Delete Companies’ User Permission.
With this permission, on the Company Overview page of an inactive company, you will see the action ‘Permanently Delete.’
Deleting new companies because they were added incorrectly or are not needed is simple. When you click the Permanently Delete action, you will receive a confirmation popup, and you can delete the company.
However, if a company has a financial history with you, such as orders, invoices, etc., then you will not be able to delete the record, even with the user permission.
Important
You cannot get a deleted company record back. Once it is permanently deleted, it is gone for good.