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  1. Contacts - Allow duplicate contact names

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    103 comments  ·  Contacts & files » Contact  ·  Admin →
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    Not in pipeline  ·  AdminKelly Munro (Community Manager, Xero) responded

    Hi everyone, we want to thank you all for your meaningful feedback and detail of the uses you each have for enabling duplicate names for contacts.

    Right now, the contact name field is the key identifier that interacts with many other Xero features, and as such, changing how this field functions is not a small feat.

    As noted by others in the comments, some users have found adding unique characters or using the account number in the contact name useful.

    At this time we don’t have plans for developing the ability to have duplicate names of a contact in Xero. However, the work happening around core features might open the door for improvements like this down the line.

    For now, we'll keep a close watch on the support this idea continues to build, and we’ll make sure to share updates if anything changes.

    Nick Hill supported this idea  · 
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    Nick Hill commented  · 

    This is an incredible limitation of Xero. The unique identifier on a contact should be the AccountNumber field - not the name field!
    The documentation does not make this limitation very clear. Worse, when adding a contact with the same name as an existing contact via API, there is no warning message. Xero effectively merges contacts leaving a horrible mess of invoices, payments etc amalgamated to the same contact. I see this issue has been unresolved for at least 10 years, which is quite stunning really for such a large company with an army of developers.