SAP Certified Partner
One product = one article number? Within your company this statement is probably true, but at the latest when your product leaves the company or you receive a delivery yourself, chaos can be set in motion by company-related article numbers. Managing external article numbers for customers and/or suppliers can therefore be extremely useful – but unfortunately it is still given too little attention, especially in smaller companies.
Almost every company manages its item master data under its own item numbers. This means that customers maintain the items they order from you under a different item number than the one stored for this item in your ERP system. The same applies to items that you order from your suppliers. To facilitate the interaction between customers and suppliers, SAP Business One offers the option of storing the so-called ‘catalogue number’ for each item and business partner. Especially if you work with very large suppliers, they will not go to the trouble of storing all your customers’ article numbers in their own system.
You, in turn, can offer your customers this service and thus move up the list of preferred suppliers.
You create a purchase order in your SAP Business One using your own article number. However, the actual order document (printout or PDF) should only contain the supplier’s catalogue number – nothing could be easier. Both fields are available in your system. You therefore only need to configure them once and you’re done!
You receive goods from your major supplier. Of course, only the supplier’s catalogue numbers are listed on the delivery note. No problem – the expected catalogue numbers are already displayed in your goods receipt document. This means that data can be easily booked in (also by barcode scan, of course).
Your customer is on the phone and wants to order goods. However, they only have their internal article number to hand. Fortunately, you don’t have to start a complicated search process. You simply type the customer’s order number into the ‘GP catalogue no.’ column in your sales order – et voilà!
Your customer is on the phone and needs to order something quickly, but has no article numbers to hand. Attention: Only specially authorised items may be sent to this major customer. Don’t make any mistakes now, otherwise a return is inevitable. Fortunately, you can see which items are authorised for this customer with just one click in the sales order. Wow… Your customer will be delighted with this service!
