Discussion of No. Series Setup Logic

JDVyska

Just curious what folks out there like to advise their clients about the logic of each Number Series.

For example, in CRONUS NA, there are a wide array of documents that simply have a 4 or 6 digit number, then others have prefaced numbers with characters representing the document type. I've also seen people embed date data into a No. Series to have the documents be clear (such as SO11-0051 is the 51st Sales Order of 2011).

What do you like to do for the different areas and why? Master records (customers) vs documents (SO's)?

mgmutha

Hi,

For our clients we are using logic as "Document Type + Financial Year+ Sr. No." i.e. SO/10-11/00001.
Because it helps to find document type, financial year and we reset no. series every year by changing FY.
Related Master No. Series you can use Prefix "C" for Customer. For. Ex. C000001 or You can take initial/shortform of Customers Name (Manual No. Series).

DenSter

The only reason why you would want to have some sort of indicator per type of document is so that when you do a Navigate, you don't get different types of document with the same number. So if you enter '1234' as the document number, you don't get a posted shipment, sales invoice, receipt, warehouse document, etc with the same number. So I'd recommend using SI-00000001 for sales invoices, PI-000000001 for purchase invoices, etc. That's the only reason why I would ever recommend adding any 'logic' to numbering series.

Even master date makes no difference (customers/vendors/items, etc), it's just a value to uniquely identify a record, you should never attach any more logic to it than that.

Everything else should really be done by attributes. You want all invoices in 2011, set a filter on the posting date. You want all orders in a certain region, add a region field, or use dimensions. You're only complicating matters by adding logic to numbering series.

matttrax

I prefer different letters on the number series just for the off chance that the same number posts on the same day for different types of documents. It also helps when you are staring at large chunks of data.

Andwian

I would suggest to give any prefixes in the No. Series, and the Year/Month character, for Document.

For master data, there is no need to give some logic in them.

kine

Another "why" to begin with letter is to not have problems with numbers starting with zero when you e.g. export them into excel.

kriki

[Topic moved from 'General Chat' forum to 'NAV/Navision Classic Client' forum]

JDVyska

kriki wrote:

[Topic moved from 'General Chat' forum to 'NAV/Navision Classic Client' forum]

Thanks - I wasn't sure where to make it live, since it's product specific, but also business logic chatter. :thumbsup: