The Donor Pages app gives you a web form to collect donations from donors.
When the donation is submitted via the web form:
If this is a corporate donation and the Company Name is filled in, the Name given to the donor will be the Company Name. Otherwise, the Name used will be the first and last name.
Method:CRM searches to see if this Name matches other names in your customer list. A match is found if a record starts with the entirety of the name. Thus, if the entered name was "Pop and Skate" and Method:CRM has an existing customer called "Pop and Skate Inc", then this is considered a match.
Method:CRM searches to see if the entered Email exists in Method:CRM.
Based on what it finds, the Web to Lead form continues as follows:
If a Name match is not found, a new donor is created.
If a Name match is found and the email also exists, then no new donor is created.
If a Name match is found but the email doesn't exist, then a new donor is created with the Name followed by a number indicating the number of existing matches. If that new name also exists, then a Name is created appended with the current date.
The above three cases cannot account for every situation where a donor already exists in Method:CRM. If you find a duplicate donor has been entered, you can manually merge those two records together either QuickBooks or Method:CRM.