About Planning Your Item Numbering System

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About Item Number Formats

Adding Item Structures

Setting Up Inventory Control

Before you begin to set up your item numbering system, you should:

  1. List all your items.
  2. Design an item numbering scheme that suits your inventory reporting needs.

    You need to design formats that will meet your needs for identifying items as well as for sorting and grouping items for inventory reports and lists.

    Once you decide on the types of item numbers you need, create one or more item structures in Inventory Control to use for formatting item numbers. For example, you may want all your item numbers to have the pattern #XX-XXXX. A sample item number using this pattern is #01-2C45.

Important! Keep in mind that it is easier to design your item formats carefully before entering them into the system than to change them afterward.

You need to be familiar with the following terms:

Sorting Order for Item Numbers

Inventory Control sorts item numbers for reports and lists from left to right in the following order:

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Example:

The program sorts the following sample item numbers in the order shown:

Note: Separator and prefix characters do not affect the order.

Summary of the Rules for Item Numbers

Note: You cannot enter duplicate item numbers.