Merging Suppliers
Over time, duplicate supplier profiles can creep into your system - especially when invoices arrive with slightly different supplier names, or when multiple team members add the same supplier independently. The merge feature lets you consolidate duplicate suppliers into a single profile without losing any data.
When to merge
Common scenarios where merging is useful:
- Naming variations - "Metro Foods" and "Metro Foods Ltd" are the same supplier.
- Acquisitions - a supplier has been taken over and you want to consolidate under the new name.
- Accidental duplicates - the same supplier was added manually and also auto-created from an invoice.
Possible duplicates
Brikly watches your supplier list for records that look like the same business and shows them in a Possible duplicates panel at the top of CostingBrik > Suppliers. The panel only appears when there is something to review, and it disappears once you have dealt with everything on it.
Each row shows both records with their invoice and linked-item counts, so you can see at a glance which one carries more history. Review opens the merge dialog with both suppliers already selected, defaulting to keeping the record with more history behind it. You can swap the direction before confirming.
Each suggestion is labelled with the evidence behind it:
| Label | What it means |
|---|---|
| Same registration number | Both records carry the same VAT or company number from their invoices. This is close to conclusive - they are almost always one business. |
| Similar name | The two names reduce to the same core wording once suffixes are stripped. Worth a look, though genuinely separate businesses in one area often share a word (for example "Cotswold Foods" and "Cotswold Cheese Company"). |
Nothing on this panel happens on its own. Every row is a suggestion, and the merge only runs when you confirm it. Two records can legitimately share a registration number if a group trades through separate accounts, and only you know whether that applies.
How to merge suppliers
You can start a merge from a suggestion in the Possible duplicates panel, or manually at any time:
- Navigate to CostingBrik > Suppliers.
- Open the More menu and select Merge Suppliers.
- Follow the three-step process.
Step 1: Select suppliers
Choose two suppliers:
- Supplier to remove - the duplicate profile that will be deactivated after merging.
- Supplier to keep - the profile that will absorb all records from the removed supplier.
Brikly suggests potential matches based on name similarity, shown with confidence badges to help you identify likely duplicates quickly.
Step 2: Preview the merge
Before anything changes, Brikly shows you exactly what will be transferred. The preview includes counts across all affected areas:
| Category | What transfers |
|---|---|
| Ingredients | Ingredient-supplier links and pricing |
| Consumables | Consumable-supplier links and pricing |
| Invoices | All historical invoices |
| Contacts | Contact details from the removed supplier |
| Matching patterns | AI-learned matching patterns |
| Analytics | Spending and pricing analytics |
| VAT patterns | Learned VAT rate patterns |
| One-off patterns | One-off purchase patterns |
This gives you full visibility before committing to the merge.
Step 3: Confirm and merge
Review the summary and optionally add a merge note to document why the consolidation was made (e.g. "Duplicate created from invoice - same supplier as Metro Foods").
Click Confirm Merge to execute. All records transfer to the kept supplier, and the removed supplier is deactivated.
Once confirmed, the merge is permanent. The removed supplier's profile is deactivated and all its records are reassigned to the kept supplier. Take a moment to review the preview carefully before confirming.
Permissions
Merging suppliers requires delete permissions in CostingBrik. Typically only owners and admins have this level of access.
Tips
- Start with the Possible duplicates panel - it does the searching for you, and the registration number suggestions are the ones most worth acting on.
- Merge before processing new invoices - if you spot a duplicate, merge it before processing the next invoice from that supplier. This prevents the learning system from building separate patterns for each profile.
- Use the merge note - a quick note helps your team understand why a supplier disappeared from the list.
- Keep the record with more history - it is the smaller change, and it is what Brikly suggests by default.
Merging also passes the removed supplier's VAT or company number to the record you keep, if that record did not already have one. This helps Brikly recognise the supplier on future invoices even when the name on the document changes. See Supplier Matching for how that is used.