From the 1st of January 2019 onwards, 15 Flemish municipalities will be combined into 7 different municipalities with a new name. If you have clients residing in one of these municipalities, this will affect your CRM database and will cause it to be outdated. In this article we'll explain what happens exactly and we will give you some pointers on how to deal with the changes.

Keep in mind this change only affects you if you have clients with Flemish addresses in your CRM! 

Which municipalities are affected?

What happens to the postal code?

Let’s take Deinze as an example, with the postal code 9800. Nevele will remain a sub-municipality of Deinze and will thus keep the postal code 9850. It’s only the name of the municipality that changes. 

What with street names and house numbers? 

The fusion of certain municipalities also affects street names and house numbers. Some street names received a new name and also some house numbers changed. More information can be found on this website, where you can find an elaborate list of which streetnames change their names. Download the .zip file ‘Fusie 2019 verschilbestand 20181220.zip’

How to deal with this change in Teamleader?

• For the new municipalities, we adapted the postal code prefill, so that if you enter a postal code, the right municipality is prefilled automatically. 

• For your existing customers however, the old municipality name won't change automatically into the new municipality name. You’ll need to follow these instructions to update the field ‘City’ for the municipalities affected. Let’s take the municipality ‘Nevele’ as example again:

  • Create a segment on company/contact level with all companies/contacts with an address in Nevele. Use the following Rule:
    
    

  • You’ll have a segment with all companies in Nevele. You can then export this segment to Excel:

    • Don’t export the basic columns, but choose to create a new template for the export selecting the columns ‘Teamleader ID’, ‘City’ and 'ZIP code’
      
      
      
      

    • Download your Excel file and change the name of the 'City' to Deinze. Save the Excel file and import the file in Teamleader again. The companies will be adapted to the right municipality name. 

      
      
• Double check if the street names and house numbers of your clients in the affected municipalities remain the same using the .zip file (Fusie 2019 verschilbestand 20181220.zip) mentioned above. If not, you'll need to manually change them in your CRM. You could also add the streetname and number to your Excel export to immediately change the streetname and number via export/import.