Duplicate Vendors

What I have done in the past in to try the easy matches first:
1.) Look for Duplicate Tax Id numbers
2.) Look for Duplicate Addresses
3.) Look for Duplicate Legal Names

After that it starts to get tricky and more manual. I have used some compare commands to look for similar names. The problem comes in where someone typed in Health and the next Hlth. It is tough to match these up, but it can be done. Usually takes a couple of passes to catch everything.

I used access but you could also pull the queries in excel and do mulitple sorts or pivot tables if you are more familar with that tool

Another suggestion in addition to what Mark Cook recommended:
- Extract the vendor name and address and open them in Access or Excel.
- Use whatever method you'd like to delete all alphabetic characters and punctuation from the address so that all you have is street number and zip code.
- Sort by those and search for duplicates.

This method helps find those where the name may have been entered slightly differently (IBM vs. Intntl Bus Mach), along with St vs Street and such.

Of course you then have the fun of deciding what to do with the duplicates, especially if they all have history attached . . .

Best regards,
Dave
(303) 773-3535