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Maintain XML Lookup Files

Article Number: 1765 | Rating: Unrated | Last Updated: Thu, Jun 22, 2023 at 10:26 PM

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Maintain XML Lookup Files

In the sales order cycle, the orders we receive will need to specify product codes and delivery locations for the orders. To ensure that no product codes from two different suppliers are coincidentally the same, it is very common to use a 13-digit EAN code for the products being ordered. This code encompasses a unique supplier code, which is issued by a national body (the UK body is known as GS1 UK†), with a simple numeric part number for each product that the supplier has in their price list.X

Since these numbers are unlikely to bear any relationship to your current stock codes, the XML process must know how to translate from one to the other. This is achieved by maintaining an XML lookup table.

Customer locations are likely to exist in your sales ledger as delivery address codes, and again the customer will use their own codes for these in the XML files. These too must be maintained in the table. It is not uncommon for customers to use EAN codes for their locations, although many others may use a shorter alphanumeric code.

You will need to maintain an extra data item in the stock file to hold the product EAN code, and in the sales ledger accounts file to hold the customer location code. The following options update the lookup table from these two files, and allow you to make manual entries too.

In the purchase order cycle, similar options may apply.

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