When One Item Has Multiple Codes

Some items like unique diamond jewelry or patented medicines can be purchased only from the specific vendor, but these are the rare cases. Most of the goods are supplied today by multiple vendors and brands while having the same or very similar qualities – e.g. matches, paper clips, or hamburger buns. If you have in your inventory an item that you purchase from multiple vendors, or supply to major customers, you may have to use in marketing documents the item code assigned by each vendor or customer. To enable you maintaining different items code per vendor or customer and keep managing inventory for the single item, SAP business One lets you define multiple BP Catalog Numbers for each item:

You can define catalog numbers for multiple items per business partner and select the checkbox “Print BP Catalog Number in Documents” if needed, or set multiple catalog numbers per item for multiple business partners. The BP Catalog Number can be displayed in the respective column in all marketing documents, and in the Form Settings window, you may select/deselect the option “Print BP Catalog Number”:

The BP catalog numbers are not like the unique code you assign to each item – you can change them any time. If mass update is needed, you can use the “Global Update to BP Catalog Numbers” feature, where you can update the BP catalog numbers by various ranges:

Available in SAP Business One and SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA. This tip and all the other tips are available on SAP Community. You can also visit the Implementation Arena for useful implementation tips.