The same client twice

It happens. Someone inquires with a personal email, then books with a work one, and you have two records with half the history each.

You can't merge them

CoreHue has no merge. Two contacts cannot be combined into one, and their histories cannot be moved between them. There is no delete either. Archiving is what you have.

Worth knowing up front so you do not go looking for a button that is not there.

What to do instead

1. Decide which record to keep. Usually the one with the bookings, invoices and signed contracts attached. History is the hard part to lose. Contact details are easy to retype.
2. Copy across anything useful. A phone number, a company, a note worth keeping.
3. Update the email if you need to. If the surviving record has the address they no longer use, change it so future documents reach them.
4. Archive the other one. Archive contact is in the three-dot menu on their record. You are asked for a reason. It arrives already filled in as No longer active, so accepting takes a moment. The record keeps its history, stays in your account, and drops out of your active list. See Archiving contacts.

An archived contact cannot be edited and cannot be sent anything. You can still add notes to it though. That is a good place to write "duplicate of the other record", so future-you understands.

What you lose

Whatever was attached to the archived record stays there rather than moving. If real work sits on both, your history is in two places.

That is the honest answer. It is why avoiding duplicates is worth more than fixing them.

Avoiding them

Take the duplicate warning seriously. As you type an email address into Add contact, CoreHue checks it against your existing contacts. A Possible matches panel then appears saying "You may already have this contact", with a Use contact button. Take it. This is the only warning you get, and it is easy to click past.

Know what the check does and does not cover. It matches on the email address only, and only against contacts that are still active. Two records for "Sarah Clarke" with different addresses are never picked up, because as far as CoreHue is concerned they might be two people. An archived contact on the same address is not picked up either.

Watch for the shared-email notice. If two contacts do end up on the same address, the contacts list shows Also used by another contact under each of them. That is your cue to tidy up.

Start from the contact. Creating a booking, invoice or proposal from a contact's own record means you are never creating a second one by accident.

Use one address per person. When a client emails from a new address, update their contact rather than letting a second one appear.

Search before adding by hand. Most duplicates are created by someone typing a name that already exists.

If it's happening often

Usually it is a sign that documents are being created from scratch rather than from contacts. Working from the contact record is faster anyway, because the details fill themselves in.