Introduction

When a Bill of Materials (BoM) is imported into PqW — from Cisco CCW-R, Ingram Micro, or a manual upload — the vendor names on each line item rarely match your Salesforce Account records exactly. A BoM might list a manufacturer as "Cisco Systems Pty Ltd" while your Account is "Cisco Systems, Inc.", or a distributor as "Ingram Micro India" while your org has separate Accounts for "Ingram Micro India Private Limited" and "Ingram Micro Inc."

Fuzzy Search is the PqW capability that reads these vendor names, finds the closest matching Accounts, and assigns the correct Manufacturer and Supplier across every related record — so you don't have to look them up by hand. This article explains what it is, where it runs, how it works, and what it does for you and your admins.

What Fuzzy Search is

Fuzzy Search is PqW's approximate string-matching engine. It compares vendor names from imported BoM data against Account names in your Salesforce org and finds the best match even when the names aren't identical.

Why exact matching isn't enough

Vendor names in source files are rarely standardised. The same manufacturer or supplier can appear in many forms:

An exact match fails for each of these. Fuzzy Search instead uses a distance-based algorithm to measure how close two names are, then ranks the closest Accounts as suggestions.

Key Terms

Where Fuzzy Search Runs in PqW

Fuzzy Search runs in the background, immediately after a BoM is imported — before you start working on the Quote. You don't trigger it; it fires automatically. The table below shows where it sits in the overall flow so you can see what's happening behind the scenes.

Prerequisites

For Fuzzy Search to run and produce results, the following need to be in place. These are configured by your administrator.

How it Works

The numbered stages below are what PqW does automatically. You don't perform them — they're shown so you can understand the mechanism.

Step 1. The BoM is imported

A BoM is imported into PqW. The system creates BoM Items and Master Items with the raw vendor names from the source file.

For example, a BoM includes the following manufacturer names: "Cisco Systems Pty Ltd" (Lines 1–2), "Meraki LLC" (Line 3), "Ingram Micro India" (Line 4), and "HPE" (Line 5).

Step 2. The Fuzzy Search job runs

After import, PqW automatically runs a background job that:

1. Scans the new BoM Items and Master Items for vendor names.
2. Extracts each unique name (so "Cisco Systems Pty Ltd" is processed once even though it's on two lines).
3. Creates a Fuzzy Mapping record for each unique name.
4. Compares the name against all Accounts of the configured Account Types and calculates a fuzzy distance score for each.
5. Ranks the matches and stores the top suggestions on the Fuzzy Mapping record.

For "Cisco Systems Pty Ltd", the system might find:

Step 3. Admins review the suggestions

An admin opens the Name Mapping page to review the Fuzzy Mapping records. The page shows the source name, a dropdown of ranked Account suggestions (closest first), the status (Unresolved / Confirmed), and the number of items affected.

The admin opens each dropdown, selects the correct Account, and clicks Save to confirm.

Step 4. The correct Account is pushed everywhere

Once mappings are confirmed, PqW runs the account-assignment job. It finds every BoM Item, Master Item, and Quote Item with the matching raw vendor name and assigns the confirmed Manufacturer or Supplier Account.

Step 5. Confirmed mappings are reused

A confirmed mapping is stored permanently. The next time a BoM is imported with the same vendor name, PqW finds the existing mapping and assigns the Account instantly — no new Fuzzy Mapping, no review. Each unique vendor name only needs to be resolved once.

Example: end to end

A VAR imports a 200-line CCW-R BoM from four manufacturers: "Cisco Systems Pty Ltd" (150 items), "Meraki LLC" (30), "HPE" (15), and "Acme Networks" (5).

1. Fuzzy Search detects four unique names and creates four Fuzzy Mapping records.
2. "Cisco Systems Pty Ltd" auto-resolves to "Cisco Systems, Inc." (high confidence). Three remain Unresolved.
3. An admin opens the Name Mapping page and selects "Cisco Meraki", "Hewlett Packard Enterprise", and "Acme Networks Inc." for the remaining three.
4. All 200 BoM Items now carry the correct Manufacturer Account.
5. On the next import, "Cisco Systems Pty Ltd" and "HPE" resolve instantly from the confirmed mappings — no admin action needed.

How it Helps You and Your Admins

For you, when working on a Quote:  The correct Manufacturer and Supplier are automatically assigned across BoM Items, Master Items, and Quote Items. On a large BoM with hundreds of line items from several vendors, that removes the manual lookup entirely and keeps assignments consistent across the whole Quote lifecycle, including supplier assignment and export.

For your admins: Each unique vendor name is confirmed only once. After that, the mapping is automatically reused on every future import, so there's no per-line or per-import maintenance — even as new BoMs arrive from the same vendors.

Summary

Fuzzy Search runs automatically after every BoM import, matching messy vendor names to the right Salesforce Accounts using fuzzy distance scoring, then pushing the confirmed Manufacturer and Supplier to every related record. It replaces a slow, error-prone manual lookup with a one-time confirmation per unique vendor name that's reused on all future imports.

What's Next

Once Fuzzy Search has assigned the correct manufacturers and suppliers, you'll move on to assigning suppliers to individual Quote Items and pricing the Quote. If a vendor name didn't resolve as expected, see the troubleshooting guide for how to confirm or correct a mapping.