Skip to content
← Share and support customer ideas for Xero

Settings and activity

1 result found

  1. Contacts - Allow duplicate contact names

    158 votes

    We're glad you're here

    Please sign in to leave feedback
    Signed in as (Sign out)
    Close
    Close

    We’ll send you updates on this idea

    84 comments  ·  For small businesses » Contacts & communication  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?

    We're glad you're here

    Please sign in to leave feedback
    Signed in as (Sign out)
    Close
    Close
    submitted  ·  AdminEthan M (Admin, Xero) responded

    Hey community, thank you for your continued interest in this idea.

    Wanted to provide an update here as it's been a while since we last spoke to duplicate contacts.

    I do understand that, at face value, this seems like a quick fix. However, as the contacts screen interacts with many other parts of Xero, this work can not commence until the modernisation of other, related systems is complete. 

    Due to this, we do not expect support for duplicate contacts to be delivered in the coming short-term.

    In the meantime however, we're keen to continue collecting feedback and votes on this idea, and I will update you here as soon as there's more work to share.

    An error occurred while saving the comment
    Admin ASCA commented  · 

    I'd really like to upvote this as essential please due to the fact there are many Jane Smith's who would be customers.
    Building any database record set on Name seems incredibly short sighted or simplistic. Databases need unique ID's for EVERY person for many, many reason and this being a very big one.

    That is why we have unique payroll numbers, medicare numbers etc etc. Is Xero's primary key Name? Surely it can't be can it?

    Is the fix really to have Mrs Jane Smith? Jane Smith? Jane Smith@? Jane Smith6? Jane Smith7?

    Any database software uses primary and foreign keys right? If we could use them and import them to our systems that would be better to match and import on.

    Or simply allowing us to create and External ID field in Xero that we could then populate our proper primary key from our systems into to match would be a pretty quick fix.

    I'm a bit shocked to be reading that this has been an issue for so long and Xero bases everything on name...

    Any relational database model dating back decades uses the premise of a unique number identifier surely.