Embodiments of a method for managing entities include candidate selection by a transitive bucketing process where at least one attribute of an initial data record is used to determine a set of candidate data records corresponding to the initial data record. For each candidate data record thus determined, additional candidate data record(s) may be determined using attribute(s) not used in linking the candidate data record to the initial data record. This process may be repeated until no more candidate data records are returned. The initial data record and related candidates thus determined are then resolved into group entities, each having member records that match one another above a certain threshold. If no match is found, a group entity comprising a single data record may be created. These group entities are then reconciled with other entities in a master entity index system.