Overview
SmartMoving prevents the same inventory item from being imported into more than one Storage Account for the same customer, so each physical item is tracked in only one account at a time. The protection applies whether you import items manually from the Import modal or let the system auto-link items when a Warehouse Check is completed.
Before You Start
Available to accounts using SmartMoving Storage. The duplicate protection runs automatically for anyone who can import items into a Storage Account or complete a Warehouse Check. No additional permission is required, and there is nothing to configure on the Storage Account.
To use the manual import flow, you need:
A Storage Account that you can edit.
At least one opportunity for the same customer with a completed Descriptive Inventory (DI).
Importing Items with Duplicate Protection
Import Items Manually
Open the Storage Account and go to the Inventory tab.
Click Import to open the import modal.
Open the opportunity dropdown. Available opportunities appear at the top. Opportunities whose items are already fully imported into another Storage Account for this customer appear at the bottom with a (fully imported) label and are disabled.
Select an available opportunity. The modal displays the opportunity's items.
Review any items already imported to another Storage Account for this customer. The modal shows a banner that reads, "{N} items have already been imported to an account," and those items are flagged with disabled checkboxes that cannot be selected.
Choose Import all items or Select items, depending on how much of the inventory you want to bring in. Duplicates remain skipped either way.
Click the import button.
The result: the modal closes and a success toast reports the outcome, for example, "Imported 10 items. 3 duplicate items were skipped." If no duplicates were skipped, the toast reads only, "Imported 10 items." The imported items appear in the Storage Account's inventory list.
Confirm Auto-Link from a Warehouse Check
Complete the Warehouse Check on the opportunity as you normally would.
Open the related Storage Account and go to the Audit Log. The system records an entry such as, "Warehouse Check auto-linked 8 items to storage inventory. 2 item(s) were not imported because they are already imported to Storage Account(s) #SA-100, #SA-203."
Open the originating opportunity and check its audit log. A matching entry references the target Storage Account number, for example, "Warehouse Check auto-linked 8 items to storage account SA-204. 2 item(s) were not imported because they are already imported to Storage Account(s) #SA-100, #SA-203."
The result: both audit logs show how many items were linked and how many were skipped. If no items were skipped, the duplicate phrase is omitted from both entries.
How the Duplicate Check Works
Duplicate prevention is based on the specific item record rather than the item name. The same item name (such as "Sofa") from a different Descriptive Inventory, whether under the same customer or a different one, can still be imported.
Fully imported opportunities stay visible in the dropdown so you can confirm an import has already happened. They are disabled to prevent re-selection.
Opportunities appear in the dropdown only if they have a completed Descriptive Inventory and were not spawned from a storage outbound request. Outbound-spawned opportunities reference items already held in another Storage Account, so they are excluded.
When skipped items originate from multiple different Storage Accounts, the audit log lists every distinct account number, comma-separated and prefixed with #.
If two users attempt to import the same items at the same time, the duplicate attempt is cleanly blocked with no partial records created.
Best Practices
Check the opportunity dropdown for (fully imported) entries before starting an import. If the opportunity you expected is disabled, the items are already in another Storage Account and you do not need to import again.
Review the post-import toast. The skipped count tells you how many duplicates were caught, which is a quick health check on your inventory data.
After a Warehouse Check, open the audit log on both the Storage Account and the opportunity. The two entries together show which items were linked, which were skipped, and where the duplicates already live.
If you intentionally want a second copy of an item in another Storage Account, create the item fresh in that account rather than re-importing. The duplicate check matches on the item record rather than the item name.
Troubleshooting
An opportunity I want to import is disabled with "(fully imported)". Every item from that opportunity is already imported to another Storage Account for this customer. Open the customer's other Storage Accounts to find the items.
An opportunity is missing from the dropdown. The opportunity either does not have a completed Descriptive Inventory or was spawned from a storage outbound request. Confirm the Descriptive Inventory is finished, then reopen the import modal.
The toast shows fewer items imported than I expected. The skipped count in the same toast reports duplicates that were blocked. Add the imported and skipped counts together to reconcile against the source Descriptive Inventory.
A Warehouse Check finished but no items appear in the Storage Account. Check the Storage Account's audit log. If every item was already in another Storage Account, the auto-link entry shows zero new items linked and lists the source accounts.