Inbox and sales

How to find and merge duplicate leads

Updated September 28, 2026

Step by step

1. Open duplicates

   Go to Settings › Duplicates. Pending suggestions show up with the reason and the date.

2. Compare

   Click Compare and merge. The dialog shows the two leads side by side.

3. Choose which one stays

   Mark which lead to Keep and which to Remove (use Swap to flip them). Check what moves to the one you keep.

4. Merge or dismiss

   Click Merge. If it isn’t the same person, close the dialog and click Dismiss.

When TraceClose suggests a duplicate

• Same phone number with and without the ninth digit: the same Brazilian mobile number arrived in both formats (Brazil added a leading 9 to mobile numbers, and older contacts may still lack it).
• Same email address: two leads with the same email.
• One lead’s contact channel with another’s phone number: one lead’s WhatsApp address matches the other lead’s phone number.
• Contact edited to match another lead’s: someone edited the details and they ended up identical to another lead’s.

What happens in a merge

Everything moves to the lead you keep, and the other one is deleted:

• Conversations, meetings, sales, contact channels and history events.
• Empty fields on the lead you keep are filled in with the other lead’s data (name, email, phone, tax ID). Fields that were already filled in don’t change.
• The ad source carries over if the lead you keep didn’t have one.
• The stage and salesperson are those of the lead you keep.

The history logs “Duplicate merged into this lead”. Anyone who opens the deleted lead sees the notice “Lead merged into another: you are seeing the one that was kept.”

It can’t be undone. When in doubt, compare the phone number, email and conversations before merging.

In the lead panel

Managers see the Possible duplicate lead notice (“Looks like the same person as …”) right in the panel, with the Compare and merge and Not the same person buttons. Dismissed suggestions are under Show dismissed.

Example

Example with fictional data. The customer Carlos Lima first wrote from a number saved without the ninth digit and, a week later, in the new format. They became two leads. Example Co.’s manager sees the suggestion “Same phone number with and without the ninth digit”, chooses to keep the older lead (the one with the ad source) and merges: the 2 conversations, 1 meeting and 1 sale of $450.00 move to it.

Didn’t work? See…

• I can’t see the Duplicates screen: it’s for managers and owners only. See Managers only.
• Two leads are the same person, but there’s no suggestion: the data doesn’t match under the rules above. Edit one lead’s email to match the other’s and the suggestion appears (see Edit lead details).

Frequently asked questions