Avoid processing duplicates

Help
1

I have a bot which will be processing refunds for the company I work for. The input files .xlsx contain the records/data to process these refunds against. The data is input into a company system which generates the refund.

However, it seems that the company’s system doesn’t have a mechanism to avoid processing duplicate refunds…

What is a good way to manage avoiding processing duplicate items from the bot? We don’t want someone to accidentally process the same file twice and everybody gets double refunded. I thought perhaps to generate a “Master file” which contains a full list of all record ID’s which have been already processed. However, I’m not sure how big this file will get and how long the lookup will take to check whether or not to process refund before every single item.

Are there any other better ways to manage on a higher level, a full list of all the transaction items which have been processed by the bot already (ever in the past).

2

Hi @Jon_G :wave:

The best way to deal with this is by creating a master Excel by merging all of your input Excel files and then removing duplicates from them by using the Remove Duplicate Rows activity.