The second step in most search and matching applications requires that the system can automate or assist the operator in "choosing" the relevant matching records. In online transactions, where the operator makes the final choice, this Matching process can be used to eliminate the entirely irrelevant records, or rank them in order of relevance. In many transactions the application system can be made more reliable, if instead of allowing the operator the choice, the Matching process is fully automated. In the majority of batch systems the Match decisions have to be fully automated.

To allow the easy implementation of such high quality Matching processes, the SSA-NAME3 software provides a set of Match Purposes to "mimic" the matching decisions made by the very best business users. A Match Purpose will compare two records, typically the search record and a file record, and compute a Score and Match Decision.

The out-of-the-box Match Purposes provided are used for determining same Person_Name, Individual, Resident, Household, Family, Wide_Household, Address, Organization, Division, Corporate Entity, Contact and Wide_Contact. In addition, three different Match Levels can be chosen in conjunction with each Match Purpose. These Match Levels are Conservative, Typical and Loose.

Each Match Purpose will have one or more mandatory fields and a number of optional fields. For each Match Purpose and Match Level, special rules are defined for each field of available data that control how the results from each field should be combined into the overall Match Score. Pre-set Score thresholds deliver a Match "Decision" as either Accept, Undecided, or Reject. The user’s application can override these thresholds, or use the raw Score to determine its own thresholds.