TL;DR
- Salesforce's standard account matching rule compares account name with address, phone or website.
- Salesforce merges up to three accounts of the same type at a time.
- A merged Salesforce account keeps the oldest Created Date and the principal account's sharing settings.
- Accounts merged away in Salesforce go to the Recycle Bin, where they stay for 15 days.
- Dedupely finds duplicate Salesforce accounts and bulk merges them with rules for which value wins.
Accounts sit at the center of a Salesforce org. Contacts, opportunities, cases and activities hang off them, so a duplicate account splits all of that across two records. Reports count the customer twice, and two reps can end up working the same company.
Salesforce can warn about duplicate accounts and merge them, a few at a time. Which account survives, and what it keeps, depends on choices you make during the merge.
In this post, you'll see how duplicate accounts form and how Salesforce spots them. You'll also see what a merged account keeps and how to choose the account that survives. For duplicate rules, editions and other objects, see our post on Salesforce deduplication and where native tools stop.
How duplicate accounts form in Salesforce
Causes differ from one org to the next. These come up often with accounts.
- Lead conversion: converting a lead can create a new account when the company already exists. Duplicate rules don't run on conversion unless Use Apex Lead Convert is enabled.
- Name variations: "Acme Corp," "Acme Corporation" and "ACME" read as three companies to anyone searching by hand.
- Imports and integrations: when no duplicate rule is active for accounts, each new row or API call can add an account.
- Branches and regions: a company with several offices can be entered once per office, by different teams.
Company suffixes cause many of these mismatches. Our post on how suffixes like Inc. and LLC hide duplicates covers them in depth.
How Salesforce spots duplicate accounts
Salesforce includes a standard account matching rule. It removes words such as "Inc" and "Corp" before comparing, and it compares these fields, as of October 2026.
| Field | How it's compared |
|---|---|
| Account Name | Exact, acronym or edit distance (close spellings) |
| Billing Street, City | Exact or edit distance |
| ZIP, Phone, Website | Exact only |
Two accounts count as a match when the name agrees along with the street, the city and state, the ZIP or the phone. Website with phone, or website with street, also counts.
So two accounts with different names but the same domain only match if their phone or street agrees too.
Source, as of October 2026: Salesforce Help, Standard account matching rule.
Merging accounts the rules didn't detect
In Lightning Experience, you merge accounts from the duplicates Salesforce shows on a record. Salesforce Help says to use the merge tool in Salesforce Classic for accounts your duplicate rules don't detect.
Scanning the whole org for existing duplicate accounts takes Duplicate Jobs, which depend on your edition. The Salesforce deduplication guide linked above covers which editions include them.
What a merged Salesforce account keeps
You can merge up to three accounts at a time, including the one that survives. You choose the principal account, then pick which field values to keep from the others. Here's what Salesforce Help says happens to the rest, as of October 2026.
| What | What happens |
|---|---|
| Field values | You choose them field by field during the merge |
| Hidden and read-only fields | Kept from the principal account, including sharing settings |
| Created By and Created Date | Kept from the oldest account, whichever one is the principal |
| Related records | Moved to the merged account, "with some exceptions" |
| Chatter feed | Kept from the principal account only; files are kept |
| Account team members | All team members from the other accounts are kept |
| Other accounts | Moved to the Recycle Bin, where items stay for 15 days |
Sources, as of October 2026: Salesforce Help, Merge duplicate accounts in Lightning Experience, Considerations for merging duplicate accounts and Recycle Bin; Salesforce developer docs, merge().
Accounts that can't be merged freely
Person accounts and business accounts can't be merged together. When a partner account is merged with a non-partner account, the partner account must be the principal. Accounts with Experience Cloud site users have their own rules, including the Manage External Users permission.
Who can merge accounts
You need Delete permission on accounts, and you must be an admin, the account owner or above the owner in the role hierarchy. If an account team member has more access than you on one of the records, you need Modify All Data.
Account hierarchies
In Salesforce Classic, the merged account keeps the account hierarchy of the principal record. Before merging, check which account each child account points to as its parent. A parent and a child account are separate entities, so they're usually not duplicates.
How to choose the account that survives
The principal account keeps its sharing settings, read-only fields and Chatter feed, and its ID stays. That makes it the most important choice in the merge.
| Question | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Which account do integrations reference? | Its ID survives, so billing, support and marketing tools keep pointing at it |
| Which account has the most opportunities and cases? | Fewer related records move, so there's less to check afterward |
| Which account has the right owner and sharing? | Sharing settings come from the principal, so access stays as intended |
| Is one a partner account or linked to a site? | Salesforce requires it to be the principal in some of these cases |
For key fields like owner, record type and billing address, agree on which value wins before the first merge. What counts as a duplicate account is case by case too. Two offices of one company can be one customer for one team and two for another.
Merging many duplicate accounts
Every native merge combines up to three accounts. A company with five account records takes at least two merges, and a backlog of hundreds of companies means hundreds of merges.
For large backlogs, a few principles keep the work safe.
- Start with the obvious duplicates, like the same name and website. Leave branches and subsidiaries for review.
- Export the accounts you plan to merge, with their IDs, owners and parent accounts.
- Merge in stages and check a sample of merged accounts after each one.
- Tell account owners before merging, since ownership and team members can change.
How Dedupely bulk merges duplicate Salesforce accounts
Dedupely connects to Salesforce Accounts so you can search by name, website, phone or address, set surviving values and bulk merge confirmed duplicates. Check the current Salesforce connector documentation for supported related records and exceptions, including custom relationships and account hierarchies. Test a sample with those relationships before a larger batch; Dedupely's merge path should not be assumed identical to Salesforce's native merge.
One account for every customer
Duplicate accounts spread further than other duplicates in Salesforce, because so much hangs off them. The standard matching rule catches accounts that share a name and an address or phone. The merge combines up to three at a time.
The choices around the merge make it safe. Pick the principal account for its ID, sharing and related records, and agree on which values win. Keep an export that outlasts the Recycle Bin.
Frequently asked questions
How do I merge duplicate accounts in Salesforce?
Open an account that Salesforce shows as a possible duplicate and view its duplicates. Select up to three accounts, choose the principal account and pick which field values to keep. In Lightning Experience, accounts your duplicate rules don't detect are merged with the Salesforce Classic merge tool instead.
How many accounts can you merge at once in Salesforce?
Three, including the account that survives. That limit applies to merges from a record, from duplicate record sets and through the API. A company with more than three account records takes several merges, and person accounts can't be merged with business accounts at all.
What happens to contacts and opportunities when you merge accounts in Salesforce?
They move to the merged account. Salesforce Help says related items are re-linked to the merged record "with some exceptions." The API docs say child records are reparented to the surviving record. The Chatter feed comes from the principal account only, while files are kept.
Can you undo an account merge in Salesforce?
Salesforce Help doesn't document an unmerge. Merged-away accounts go to the Recycle Bin, where they stay for 15 days and can be restored. Nothing says related records move back with them, so export the accounts, with their IDs and related records, before you merge.
Which account should you keep when merging in Salesforce?
Keep the account that integrations reference and that holds the right owner and sharing settings. Its ID, sharing settings and Chatter feed survive the merge. Salesforce also requires partner accounts, and in some cases accounts with site users, to be the principal record.
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