A product number (also called SKU*) is a unique internal number associated with a product, making it easily recognizable across the different systems in your company.
Some webshops may have variations of a product. If a product has multiple variants, each variant must have its own product number.
For example, if you have a product that is a pair of shoes and the shoes come in 5 different sizes:
Then the main product could have the product number "shoe" and the variants would have the following product numbers:
Size 34 would have the product number "shoe34"
Size 36 would have the product number "shoe36"
Size 38 would have the product number "shoe38"
Size 40 would have the product number "shoe40"
Size 42 would have the product number "shoe42"
The product number can include both letters and numbers. However, we advise against using special characters, as not all special characters can be recognized in all systems.
Some systems have a maximum limit for product number digits, so we recommend checking whether your systems have such a limit.
At IEX, we use the product number to synchronize your products across various systems, such as webshop, POS, accounting, and/or inventory. You can read more about product synchronization here.
If any of your products are missing a product number, you may encounter the error "missing SKU" during transfer. You can read more about that here.
*SKU, short for Stock Keeping Unit, is a unique code assigned to a product to identify it.