Inventory Basics - How to Create Good Inventory Item Numbers
- Inventory Basics
- How to name your inventory locations
- How to label your inventory locations
- How to describe your inventory items
- How to create good item numbers
- Tips for creating unit of measure names
- How to count your inventory items
- Glossary of terms
Good Item Numbers will Make Your Life Much Easier!
Item numbers are used to uniquely identify items that you carry in inventory. Some companies will call them “part numbers”,
“model numbers”, “product codes”, etc... and you can change the name “item number” to whatever you want (we’ll describe how later in the guide)
By whatever name, item numbers are important for you, and the systems you use. If you or your system can’t uniquely identify an item, you can’t
effectively account for it’s activity and whereabouts within your inventory. Item numbers also serve as a shorthand for longer item descriptions.
Instead of entering an entire name or description for an item, you can use a much shorter item number.
This speeds up the process of data
entry and inventory management.
Big companies often use long and complicated numbers for their item numbers. These are fine if you're operating a complex warehouse or retail operation. If this makes sense for your operation, then you probably already have a numbering scheme and don't need to read much further. But if you want to create a system that's easier to work with and uses your own item numbers, here are some of our recommendations.
Item Numbering Schemes
NOTE: Clearly Inventory has a feature called “Quick Entry” that allows you to enter your current inventory levels, item descriptions, units of measures, locations, and costs on an item by item basis. This feature also has an “Auto Item Numbering” option which will create item numbers for you. If you plan on using this feature (i.e. if you do not plan on uploading your data into clearly inventory via spreadsheets or tables) you do not need to worry about a part numbering scheme. Examples of the “Quick Entry” part numbering schemes are on the following page.
Tips on Creating Item Number Schemes
Clearly Inventory offers two “auto numbering” schemes that you can use if you enter your item quantities via the “Quick Entry” feature. One method that we call “Auto Alpha Numeric” will take the first three letters of the description and then add a 3 digit number to the end making a 6 character number. The other method called “Auto Number” will generate a number starting with 1001 and increasing by 1 for every subsequent item.
Here are examples of the two auto-number schemes that Clearly Inventory uses.
Once you decide on a numbering scheme, create another spreadsheet with your item descriptions and their associated part numbers. Now you should have two spreadsheets or tables. One with your Locations and another with your item descriptions and item numbers. Next we’ll create units of measure.
Next: "All About Units of Measure"
