Finding and merging duplicate ingredients

Duplicate ingredients happen easily: "Yellow Onion" in one recipe, "Yellow Onions" in another. They split your shopping list into two lines and double your pricing work. Wholesum can find likely duplicates and merge them for you, on every plan.

Video: the duplicate ingredient tool

Check for duplicates

1. Go to Ingredients.
2. Next to Check for duplicate ingredients, click Check.
3. If Wholesum finds any, you'll see "N possible duplicates". Click Review.

Wholesum found possible duplicates

Review and merge

The Duplicate ingredients window shows each group of possible duplicates, with the reason they matched:

• Same name: the names differ only by capitals, spacing, plurals, or words like "fresh" or "chopped".
• Probably the same: names spelled a letter or two apart, or names sharing a word.

Reviewing possible duplicates

For each group:

1. Choose Keep on the ingredient you want to keep. Each one shows how many recipe lines use it, whether it's priced, and its department.
2. Untick any ingredient that shouldn't be part of the merge.
3. Click Merge. Or click Not duplicates if they really are different, like Butter and Peanut Butter. Wholesum then stops suggesting that pair.

Merge all same-name groups merges every "Same name" group in one go. After a merge you'll see "Merged into name" with an Undo option.

Names that only share a word, like chicken and chicken stock, are never flagged as the same.

Merge ingredients yourself

You can also merge any ingredients you choose:

1. On Ingredients, tick two or more ingredients.
2. Click Merge N ingredients in the bar at the bottom.
3. In the Merge ingredients window, choose the ingredient to Keep, and rename it if you like.
4. Check what moves across. Recipe lines move as they are. If some lines use a different kind of unit (for example a weight vs. a count), enter their new amount and unit.
5. Click Merge N ingredient(s).

Merging two ingredients

What happens in a merge

• Every recipe that used the merged ingredients now uses the one you kept.
• Prices, store and department details fill in any gaps on the kept ingredient.
• Tags, dietary rules and purchasing details are combined.
• The other ingredients are removed.

Undo a merge

Straight after a merge, the Ingredients page shows an Undo bar. Click it to put the merged ingredients back as they were ("Merge undone").