What is a SKU and how should you name them?
If two people in the same company call the same item by two different names, stock counts drift and orders go out wrong. A SKU gives every variant one name that the whole team, the till and the warehouse agree on.
SKU, barcode and serial number
- A SKU is internal. You create it, and it identifies a variant within your own range.
- A barcode such as an EAN or GTIN is global. It is issued through GS1 or printed by the manufacturer and identifies the same variant across all companies.
- A serial number identifies one physical unit. Four identical tires share one SKU but have four serial numbers.
Many businesses keep all three: the SKU for people and internal systems, the barcode for scanning, the serial number where individual units matter.
How to name SKUs
- Keep it short: eight to twelve characters is easier to read aloud, type and print on labels.
- Use fixed segments in a fixed order, from general to specific: category, model, then variant.
- Use capital letters, digits and one separator such as a hyphen; no spaces or special characters.
- Avoid characters that are easily confused, such as O and 0 or I and 1.
- Do not start with a zero: spreadsheets often drop leading zeros during import.
- Do not encode things that change, such as price, supplier or storage location.
- Never reuse a SKU for a different item, even after the old one is discontinued.
An example scheme (illustrative)
A clothing shop uses category, model, colour and size: TSH-CLS-BLU-M is the classic T-shirt in blue, size M. The large size in the same colour is TSH-CLS-BLU-L. Anyone who reads the code knows roughly what it is, but the full description, the price and the stock level stay in the system, not in the code.
How OrgLines uses SKUs
In OrgLines the product catalogue lives in the ERP, and the till refers to those products: a till price is set for a product that must exist in the ERP. For the receipt you set a separate fiscal name, because an internal code does not tell the buyer what they bought. Properties such as size, season or brand can be kept as your own attributes per product category, so the SKU does not have to carry every detail. Existing catalogues come in through the import wizard, which lets you map columns and validate before importing, or from Microsoft Business Central. For serialized goods, each physical unit gets its own record, which keeps SKU and serial number apart.