Understanding duplicate detection during import
When importing contacts from any source, Prospo automatically checks whether each incoming contact already exists in your organisation. If it finds a likely match, it flags it as a conflict and asks you how to handle it before completing the import.
How Prospo detects duplicates
Prospo checks each incoming contact against your existing records using three methods, in order of reliability:
1. Exact email match
If the incoming contact's email address exactly matches an existing contact's email (case-insensitive), it's flagged as a conflict.
2. Exact phone match
If the phone numbers match after stripping spaces, dashes, and brackets, it's flagged as a conflict.
3. Fuzzy name match
If the first and last name closely match an existing contact's name (case-insensitive), it's flagged as a potential conflict.
Resolving conflicts
After selecting contacts to import, if duplicates are found you'll see a Resolve Duplicates step before the import runs.
For each conflict, you'll see:
- The incoming contact's name, email, and phone
- The existing Prospo contact it matched against
- A dropdown to choose your resolution
Your options:
Merge — The existing contact record is updated with any missing information from the incoming contact. Existing data is never overwritten — only empty fields are filled in. This is the default choice and recommended for most cases.
Create as New — A new contact record is created even though a similar one already exists. Use this only if you're certain these are two different people.
What "Merge" updates
When you merge an incoming contact into an existing one, Prospo fills in any gaps in the existing record:
FieldMerge behaviour
Name
Updated only if the incoming name is more complete
Never overwritten
Phone
Added only if the existing contact has no phone number
Date of birth, employment, income, retirement age
Added only if missing
Title, job title
Added only if missing
The existing contact's relationship to any clients is never changed by a merge.
Contacts without conflicts
Contacts that don't match anything in your existing records are imported immediately without any action required from you. The conflict resolution step only appears for the records that need a decision.
After import
A summary message confirms how many contacts were processed, how many were merged, and how many were created as new records. For example:
"12 contact(s) processed successfully! 3 merged, 9 created."
If any client links failed to save, you'll be prompted to add them manually from the contact's detail panel.