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Weeding out Duplicate Accounts

It is Thursday again and time for our continuing series of helpful hints for the alarm billing software CryWolf®. I know it is scandalous, but we won't be looking at letters today. Today, we will focus on the subjects receiving those letters.

No matter how careful data entrants are, duplicate accounts seem to appear in the database.  I have discovered that these duplicate accounts are opened most frequently during alarm processing.  If CryWolf® doesn't find a match for the alarm site automatically, the manufacturer recommends manually searching three times before adding an account.  I think this is because the normal duplicate prevention measures built into the system don't work when an account is added during alarm processing.  Even following these measures, duplicate accounts will slip in due to misspellings or some other error.  As a result, it is a good idea to check the system occasionally for possible duplicate accounts.

To run a report that will list possible duplicates, go to the Report Menu.  Scroll down to Searches and then to List Possible Duplicate Accounts.
There are several options available to limit the search.
Click OK, and the search will begin.  The search will produce a list that includes all addresses that have the same number and street name.  It does not eliminate addresses that have different suite or apartment numbers.  This means that in our area where all of the stores in a shopping mall have the same street address with different suite numbers, all of the businesses will be listed as possible duplicates because they have the same street number.  This makes the report a bit bulky, but these addresses are easy to skim over as you review the report for real duplicates.

I hope this will help your units clean up your databases.  Prevention of duplicates is better, but this will help you find and remove the ones that do slip in.
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