Planning a Contract Numbering Scheme

A contract number is an alphanumeric code that uniquely identifies a contract in your Project and Job Costing system.

Before you set up your contract numbering system, you need to determine your project reporting needs. Your contract numbering system should help you to identify contracts easily, as well as to sort and group contracts on reports.

If your existing numbering system does not fulfill your requirements, now is the time to decide what changes you need.

You may be able to use your existing contract numbering system, if it satisfies the following Project and Job Costing requirements.

Defining Contract Number Formats

Once you decide on the types of contract numbers you need, you need to create one or more formats for your contract numbers. For example, you might want all your contract numbers to have the pattern {customer} {department}-{contract}. An example of a contract number using this pattern is #HELI 1200-0026. Or, you might want to use different formats for basic and standard contracts, so that you can easily distinguish them.

Contract structures

You specify formats for contract numbers using contract structures. A contract structure determines the number of Segments in a contract number, the order in which the segments appear, and the position and type of separator and prefix characters in a contract number. Project and Job Costing lets you have several contract structures, so you can use several different contract number formats.

Contract numbers can contain a separator character between consecutive segments and a prefix character in front of the first segment.

Design your contract numbering scheme as follows

1. Define the segments you need for your contract numbers.

   You use segments to organize contracts by common attributes, such as company division, type of service, or region, and you can specify the segment of a contract number by which you want reports to be sorted.

   Different contracts can use different sets of segments. For example, some of your contract numbers could have two segments and some could have three segments (you might use a segment to represent a company division only in the numbers of contracts where the division is important).

    

2. If you want to restrict entries to valid codes for certain segments of the contract number, add segment codes.

   For example, you might define codes for the segment that represents a company division, as follows: 2010, 2020, 2030, and so on. When you add a new contract number to your system, you must enter one of these valid codes for that segment.

    

3. Set up one or more contract structures.You select the contract structure you want to use when you add a new contract to Project and Job Costing.

Summary of the Rules for Contract Numbers

• A contract structure can be up to 16 characters long, including all segments, separator characters, and a prefix character.

• Contract structures can have from one to five segments. For example, you could use a segment to indicate a type of service, a project manager, or a division of your company.

A segment can be up to 16 characters long, including the optional separator character(s). Keep in mind that contract structures are also limited to 16 characters, so you could have no more than one 16-character segment in a contract structure.

(Note that if you decide to use only one segment, you will sacrifice some of the sorting and classification capabilities of the system.)

• You can use an optional separator character between segments in the contract structure, and you can use an optional prefix character at the beginning of the structure.

• Project and Job Costing ignores separator and prefix characters when sorting contract numbers.

Project and Job Costing also ignores separator and prefix characters when distinguishing between contract numbers. For example, the program considers the contract numbers #5200-010 and 5200/010 to be identical, since the only difference is the prefix and separator characters.

• Contract numbers may contain blank spaces, such as in the number 22 463 999. The blank space is treated as an alphanumeric character, not as a separator, so that 11_/111/111 and _11/111/111 (where the underscore represents a space) are two difference contract numbers.

• The program does not allow you to enter duplicate contract numbers.

Sorting Order for Contract Numbers

Project and Job Costing sorts contract 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

For example, the program sorts the following sample contract numbers in the order shown:

123

123A

A12

A2

AB1234

Separator and prefix characters do not affect the order.

Tips for Contract Number Formats

When you design your contract number format, consider the following suggestions:

• Do not mix numbers and letters in segments to make the order in which contract numbers appear on reports and in lists more predictable.

• When you assign numbers to segments, leave sufficient gaps to allow for later expansion of your system. For example, for a segment used to define a service type, assign 100, 200, 300 rather than 010, 020, 030.

• Assign contract numbers according to the order in which you want contracts to appear on reports and lists. For example, you can identify the type of a contract as new construction or maintenance by assigning segment codes 1100, 1200, and 1300 for maintenance and 2100, 2200, and 2300 for new construction.

• Use segments of different lengths in contract structures, or use some alphabetic segments, so that you can easily identify what each segment of a contract number represents.