Designing Purchase Orders Coding Schemes

This topic describes the codes you assign to the records for the optional templates, additional costs, and shipping methods you can add to Purchase Orders, and offers some tips to help you decide on the codes to use.

Code Name	Maximum Length	Permitted Characters
Additional cost code	6	numbers and letters
Account set code (stand alone program)	6	numbers and letters
Item code (stand alone program)	24	alphanumeric, plus blanks and special characters
Ship-via code	6	numbers and letters
Template code	6	numbers and letters
Requisition, purchase order, receipt, or return document number	22	alphanumeric prefix, numbers

When you design new coding schemes, you should assign codes that make it easy to identify each record type and that list records in the order you want them to appear on reports and in Finder forms.

Each code of a single type (such as an additional cost code) must be unique. In most cases, you should also assign unique codes to all your records, so there is no chance of confusing one type of record with another.

You can use any combination of numbers and letters in all Purchase Orders codes. For example, all of the following would be valid ship-via codes:

 

A1

123

A01

123A

AB1234

To simplify codes, we recommend that you:

• Use the same number of characters in all codes of the same record type.

• Use codes of at least three characters, to allow for future expansion.

• Use a system that is significant for your business, such as codes that identify a geographical region, or a type of template or cost.

• If possible, use only numbers in your codes, for consistency of sorting.

Sorting Order of Codes

Purchase Orders sorts codes on screens and reports in a specific order, which you should take into consideration when designing codes.

Purchase Orders reads codes from left to right, and uses the following sequence to put them in order:

 

[Blank] ! " # $ % & ' ( ) * + , - . / 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 : ; < = > ? @ A B C D E F G H I JK L MN O P Q R S T U V W X YZ [ \ ] ^ _ ` a b cdefg h i jklmno p q r s t u v w x yz { | } ~

The codes listed in the introduction to this discussion would be sorted by Purchase Orders into the following order:

 

123

123A

A01

A1

AB1234

Codes containing fewer than the maximum number of permitted characters are left-justified in Purchase Orders Finders, forms, and on reports.

See also

Steps for setting up Purchase Orders