Duplicates
When a database has multiple records for the same person or business, this can result in your team acting on incomplete or out-of-date information on one record, unaware of the information on the other record. Imagine a customer on credit hold receiving another delivery because the duplicate record didn't indicate credit hold.
Duplicates can be created by accident, perhaps when importing data without the appropriate duplicate checking, or by users forgetting to look for an existing record before creating a new one. You can find a list of duplicates by clicking Scan for Duplicates in the Tools menu. Try matching on just email or just mobile phone, etc... Act! comes with a wizard to merge one pair of duplicate contacts at a time, however this is time-consuming, and may not suit if you have a large number of duplicates, and does not merge companies.
The Duplicate Remover Wizard add-on allows you to specify match criteria & merge all duplicate contacts in bulk, and/or merge all duplicate companies in bulk. We recommend purchasing a support session to assist with first use for the best outcome, and always backup first.
Attachments
After years of attaching documents, quotations & email messages to history, we have seen databases accumulate between 10Gb to 300Gb of attachments. This can affect database performance, but also make it more difficult to synchronise a copy of the database to laptops, or to manage backups. If your Act! database is in the cloud, this can add to your hosting cost.
The Attachments2OneDrive add-on moves your attachments to the 1000Gb+ of OneDrive cloud storage included in your Microsoft 365 Business plan, retaining shortcuts in Act! to open attachments hosted in OneDrive, so you elimate local attachment storage, save on cloud storage costs & boost performance.
Database Maintenance
Databases can become larger & slower than necessary due to, for example, a build up of temporary or obsolete data; or bad formatting due to how data is copied & pasted in (or recorded by plugins); or picture fields populated with images larger than required. The causes can vary greatly.
Our Database Expert Optimisation service can analyse your database to identify & resolve many issues for an affordable fixed fee.
