Duplicated SKU

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   We carry prodcuts from various vendors and while each SKU number is always unique within the same vendor or company but often times they are duplicated by another vendor who have used the exact same SKU for another item.  The only way I can figure out how to work around this issue is by combining the vendor SKU number with the vendor ID so that SKU 2081 for vendor 1 becomes 2081-1.  This seemed like an ok idea at first but it's creating a lot of other problems as result of it (e.g. image names, sub-product SKU generation, vendor orders, etc would have the wrong SKU number).  Has anyone out there successfully made modications to address this issue or know of a way around it or maybe I'm just doing something totally wrong. 

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ACTMARK Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 01-April-2007 Status: Offline Points: 0	Post Options Post Reply Quote ACTMARK Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Topic: Duplicated SKU Posted: 13-April-2010 at 3:02pm
	We carry prodcuts from various vendors and while each SKU number is always unique within the same vendor or company but often times they are duplicated by another vendor who have used the exact same SKU for another item. The only way I can figure out how to work around this issue is by combining the vendor SKU number with the vendor ID so that SKU 2081 for vendor 1 becomes 2081-1. This seemed like an ok idea at first but it's creating a lot of other problems as result of it (e.g. image names, sub-product SKU generation, vendor orders, etc would have the wrong SKU number). Has anyone out there successfully made modications to address this issue or know of a way around it or maybe I'm just doing something totally wrong.

katharina Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Senior Member Joined: 25-October-2005 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 0	Post Options Post Reply Quote katharina Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 13-April-2010 at 3:08pm
	We are doing it the other way around. We add 2 digits in front of the product SKU as a vendor identification. This has the advantage that we can sort it in the update inventory, keeping them together by vendor. Makes that part easier, especially if you have lots of products.
	Katharina ***************** www.GermanPlaza.com *****************

ACTMARK Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 01-April-2007 Status: Offline Points: 0	Post Options Post Reply Quote ACTMARK Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 13-April-2010 at 4:45pm
	Katharina, Do you get grief with your vendors for sending order with different SKU numbers? Also, I have the batch image upload add-on which means the image name should be the same as the SKU which means I have to physically change the name of the images, which I know can be done in a batches using photoshop but just another extra step. Putting it as a suffix does eliminate some of the issues I had with sub-product suffix generation. So really there's no better way? Our in-store POS and order system doesn't use the SKU ID as the unique identifier for this very reason. It uses its own generated unique product id as the index fields. I think PC has product id as well. When we update or add new products, we have a few option as to which fields to use as the unique identifier for the upload. Some cases we use the UPC, most of the others we use the concantenated SKU + vendor code as the unique ID. Their own unique product ID doesn't help with updates and new products since no one uses those codes but our own database unless I'm modifying an export sheet manually. I was hoping there was something similar that we can do with PC. Almost forgot, the other issue we have is when we add a 2 digit code to some of the SKUs that have hyphens in it already is that CSV automatically converts it to date format when you try to use and downloads from the database rendering the code useless. We have several vendors that use hyphenated codes. I guess I could use underscore to avoid the issue.

katharina Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Senior Member Joined: 25-October-2005 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 0	Post Options Post Reply Quote katharina Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 13-April-2010 at 4:54pm
	We don't have vendors drop ship items, so we don't even run into the issues you have in the first place. We did implement this 2 digit thing long before we switched to PC, because this was the only way for us to identify the maker/vendor we've got things from. It just worked out well for us, including images. I do think this is something PC needs to work on. They are on their way, so I think down the road it will be better. Posting all this will help them to improve their product, because it give them various perspectives.
	Katharina ***************** www.GermanPlaza.com *****************

Guests Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Guest	Post Options Post Reply Quote Guests Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 13-April-2010 at 11:17pm
	Hi ACTMARK, Thorny issue here, eh? Our batch image processor could be customized to use the actual product ID for each product (which would be an absolutely unique identifier), but then I think you'd still be left with having to rename your images to match them up. We chose SKU as folks are more likely to know that than to know the actual product ID. I don't think there should otherwise be any data reason you can't have duplicate SKUs so long as that wouldn't confuse you when fulfilling orders. Another option would be to take Katharina's approach and then customize the communications to your drop shippers and just strip out the vendor ID from the SKU's before sending to them.

Guests Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Guest	Post Options Post Reply Quote Guests Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 13-April-2010 at 11:21pm
	Reaching for it, but any chance your vendors/drop shippers could provide Universal Product Codes (a.k.a. "bar codes")? These would be completely unique by definition.

ACTMARK Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 01-April-2007 Status: Offline Points: 0	Post Options Post Reply Quote ACTMARK Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 14-April-2010 at 12:32am
	The problem is only some of our vendors have UPCs. Also we found out that some vendors have UPCs but unless they are regestering those UPCs, they may not be unique. Plus style numbers is what customers generally use since UPCs are quite long. I'm having my web developer look into the feasibility of modifying the code so that all the same restrictions apply in terms of one of the fields being unique, we’re just going to try and change it so that instead of enforcing the SKU field to be unique, we’re going to make a newly created field unique, let’s call it item number (vendor code + SKU). I'm just not sure how compicated that would be and if it would affect the integrity of the database. Come to thing of it, maybe there's an easier approach . . . maybe the uniqueness problem is just and import problem. That might be an easier and more localized restriction to fix.