Processing downloads (AL3 files) from carriers can be a very time saving task that can help you and your team keep your customer and policy data up to date.  The problem is that duplicates can be made if you are not careful when processing your downloads.  When processing downloads, you will see that the "Client" field will be either Green or Red.

• Transactions with a green "Client" indicate that a match was found for that transaction and that the matching record will be updated with the information in that transaction. These transactions are usually "Policy Change", "Cancellation", or "Reinstatement".
• Transactions with a red "Client" indicate that no match was found and that a new record will be created for that policy with the information in that transaction. Typically "New Business" and "Renewal Image" will be in red. Unless they were previously entered in the system.

To avoid duplicate entries in your database, look for the transactions with a red "Client".  You can double-click on the red client name and search for a match if one was not found.  In the image below (Fig. 1), double-clicking on "Velma Brown" will pull up the "Choose/Search Client" screen (Fig. 2).  This will allow you to find the client by name.  When you have found the client, select "OK".  The screen should now have that transaction's "Client" in green (Fig. 3).  When you process that download transaction, it will update the policy that you selected in the "Choose/Search Client" screen.

Downloaded transactions that are of the type "Policy Change" or "Cancellation" implies that a policy already exists.  These transactions should match with a record in InsurancePro in many cases.  Processing "New Business" transactions when data does not match with information that may have been entered into InsurancePro as a quote or a prospect may create duplicate information as well.  When processing "New Business" transactions, be aware of any information you may have already entered into InsurancePro prior to processing the download transaction.

Matches are made using the following criteria:

1. The Policy Number, the Policy Type, and the Effective Date must all match
2. OR The Policy Holder Name, the Effective Date, the Street Address, and the Policy Type must all match

There are nuances to matching each piece of data.  This is how each piece of data is matched:

• Policy Number - InsurancePro removes suffixes starting with dashes.  For example, the policy number "12345678-90" will match with any policy number that has "12345678" for its left most digits.
• The effective date when matching #1 above matches anything 3 days before or after the effective date provided in the downloaded transaction.
• The effective date when matching #2 above must match the exact date.
• The street address only matches on the first 8 characters.

Fig. 1

 Fig. 2

 Fig. 3