n8n CSV Lead Cleanup: Deduplicate Contacts by Company

Automatically deduplicate your lead CSV/XLSX—one best contact per company

Stop cleaning spreadsheets by hand. This n8n workflow uploads your leads file, groups rows by organization, and deduplicates contacts so you end up with a cleaned CSV containing one contact per company—optionally using OpenRouter to choose the most senior named contact when multiple people appear.

What this workflow does

• Ingests your leads file via an n8n Form trigger (CSV/XLSX) along with a Max Rows in Cleaned CSV limit.
• Extracts and groups data from the spreadsheet, then groups records by organization.
• Deduplicates per company by identifying repeated people/roles and marking entries as Named or Generic when no person name exists.
• Processes only up to your configured limit for the cleaned output, while a separate branch computes a full-file summary report.
• AI-assisted seniority selection (OpenRouter): if a company has multiple candidate named contacts, the workflow calls OpenRouter (chat completions) to select the most senior person.
• Exports results by merging AI-selected and directly selected contacts into cleaned_leads.csv.
• Generates a report by converting cleanup metrics into cleanup_report.json.

Use cases

• Clean exported lead lists before importing into your CRM.
• Standardize “multiple entries per company” data from sales sourcing tools.
• Remove duplicates while preserving the most relevant decision-maker contact.
• Run repeatable CSV deduplication as part of an n8n automation pipeline.

Technical details

• OpenRouter setup: add an OpenRouter API key to n8n using HTTP Header Auth (Authorization: Bearer YOUR_KEY).
• Configuration: set the Excel sheet name (for XLSX) and choose the OpenRouter model ID.
• Workflow nodes used include: if, set, code, limit, merge, and sticky note.

Perfect for n8n users, automation engineers, and SaaS operators who need fast, reliable CSV lead cleanup with deduplication by company.