ERP Coding Standards: Stable Item, Customer and Supplier Codes
Design stable codes independent of people, prices and short-lived categories, using aliases and attributes for language and change.
Learning objective
Approve scalable standards, conflict checks and old-to-new mapping.
Roles
Business owners, data or integration leads, IT operations, security and audit
Prerequisites
- Codes remain unique across interfaces and reports.
- Name changes do not require new codes.
- Old codes resolve to new records.
Completion checks
- Codes remain unique across interfaces and reports.
- Name changes do not require new codes.
- Old codes resolve to new records.
Common errors
- Embedding employee names.
- Translating or trimming leading zeros.
- Reassigning inactive codes.
Thailand project note
For Thailand confirm multilingual data, THB/foreign currency, Asia/Bangkok time, segregation and retention; regulated tax, customs, BOI and statutory accounting require qualified Thai review.
Related modules
Steps
- 01
Inventory coded objects, capacity, current rules, external identifiers and historical references.
- 02
Separate system key, business code, legal number, barcode and display name.
- 03
Encode only stable classification; keep owner, price and region as attributes.
- 04
Specify character set, length, case, leading zeros, check digits and reserved ranges.
- 05
Store Chinese, English and Thai names and search aliases separately; never translate unique codes.
- 06
Test sorting, printing, scanning, interfaces, import/export and legacy mapping.
- 07
Govern requests, conflict checks, deactivation, merge and no-reuse rules.
Implementation notes
- Codes remain unique across interfaces and reports.
- Name changes do not require new codes.