Identity matches: Same client or Keep separate
Promo shops accumulate near-duplicates: "Camp Canine" in the mailbox and "Camp Canine LLC" in QuickBooks Online, a contact who changed her email address, a rescue that books under two names. When Scout suspects two records describe the same customer or contact, it raises an identity match and asks you. It never joins records on its own.
Where identity matches appear
An identity match is a kind of point — one item Scout raises with the proof behind it — so it appears in your Inbox like any other item. It is also counted separately in the Housekeeping row at the top of the Inbox under Identity review, and the header alerts bell tells Owners and Admins when reviews are waiting. Because linked records are what the Map draws, identity matches also show up as pending links there.
The What do these mean? link in the Housekeeping row puts it in one sentence: "Scout found records that may belong to the same customer or company. You decide whether they should be joined together."
Making the decision
- Open the identity match from the Inbox.
- Read the evidence. The match carries MATCH evidence rows naming the two records and what they have in common — an address, a domain, a contact, an invoice reference.
- Scout hands the decision over explicitly, under the heading Your call — Scout won't guess this one, with the reason underneath: a wrong merge poisons two accounts at once, so this one waits for you, and either answer trains the matcher.
- Choose Same client if the two records are one customer, or Keep separate if they are genuinely two.
Either way Scout confirms your decision in place and records it. The item leaves your action item list, the Map redraws to reflect the answer, and the identity review counter drops.
Why Scout asks instead of deciding
A wrong join is expensive and hard to unpick: two accounts' invoices, threads and history become one, and every number built on top of them is wrong until somebody notices. A wrong split is cheap by comparison — you see the same customer twice for a while. So Scout proposes and a person decides, every time. There is no setting that turns identity matches into automatic merges.
Your answers are not thrown away either. Both outcomes train the matcher, which is why Keep separate is as valuable an answer as Same client — it teaches Scout which similarities do not mean sameness in your book.
Who may decide
- Owners and Admins may decide any identity match they can see.
- Members may decide matches on their own work or their teams' work.
- Viewers cannot decide. They may see the match, and the buttons are not offered.
Good to know
- An identity match uses its own two decisions. The ordinary close actions — Handled and Dismiss — are not how you answer one.
- You can only decide a match you are authorized to see, and the evidence behind it follows the same tiers as every other point: seeing the match does not grant you the original records.
- Scout keeps a record of the decision. If you later conclude you were wrong, raise it with support rather than trying to undo it from the Inbox.
- Identity matches never lapse into silence. They wait in the Housekeeping row until someone answers.