Best Practice - Item numbers vs. description

Feb 22, 2006 2 Replies
E

We have serialized sku's (about 450) and about 1500 sku's that are not serialized. 50% of all skus have a 12 month life - sometimes less. I am stuggling over where I should focus - item numbers or descriptions for organizing, sorting, etc. Would I be best served by starting either one or both with the model year? I'm assuming there is no way to increase the character limit on items from 25 and description from 30?



What suggestions are there for setting up a numbering system that bests allow for adding future skus and keeping search/lookup results most complete? Next year, should I pull old dead inventory out of RMS - would that effect future reporting but ease lookups???



Thanks, from better at selling than systems!


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J

Eric,

How about a department and/or category instead? It's hard to create and keep a part numbering scheme working, especially if more than 2 people are creating part numbers.

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T

I don't think you want to change the field lengths. If you can't or won't use the manufacturer part number for your item lookup code (there's certainly plenty of reasons not to), try to make the SKUs intuitive. Of course, intuitive to one person is counter-intuitive to three others.

For example, a SKU for 2006 Small Round Green Widgets could be W06SRG (Description: 2006 Widget, Small Round Green). Without knowing what type of merchandise you sell, it's hard to say what might be an intuitive SKU format.

You can make old SKUs inactive, which will help a lot with finding items. If you ever need to re-activate an item, it's not difficult to do so. Many reports are filtered be default for active items, but I don't see why you couldn't remove that filter (though I've never tried). HTH, Tom

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