SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) SKU

An SKU is the short code a business gives to one exact thing it sells, and the letters stand for stock keeping unit. It is your own code, not the barcode printed by the maker. The barcode names the product for the whole world, while your SKU names it in the words your own staff already use.

The word exact is the whole rule. A code must name one thing a customer can buy on its own, so a blue shirt in medium and the same shirt in large are two SKUs. A shopper can take one and leave the other, so the two cannot share a number. Share it anyway and your stock reports nine shirts when every medium has gone, leaving the customer who wanted a medium waiting.

Build codes a person can read out loud, because an SKU only helps if a human recognises it fast. Start with a short letter group for the type, add the model or colour, then finish with the size. SHRT-BLU-M beats 00483719, since anyone in the storeroom can check it against the shelf without a scanner. Keep every code the same length and shape, in capitals and hyphens only. Never put a space, an accent or a slash inside one, because those characters break as soon as the file reaches a courier or a marketplace.

The damage from a duplicate is worse than it looks. Two items sharing one SKU merge into a single number, so the stock for both is wrong from that day on. Sales reports then blame the wrong product, and the reorder goes out for the item already sitting in the corner. A stock take will not find the fault, because the total can still balance. That is why shop systems refuse a duplicate on the spot, and Storek does it the moment you save the product rather than in the overnight report.

Decide the shape of your codes before you type in the first product, and write the rule on one page. Changing it later means relabelling shelves, editing courier files and confusing everyone for a month. When Linkysoft moves a shop onto a new system, cleaning the old codes is usually the first job, and it takes longer than the web application work itself. Linkysoft charges for that clean-up openly, because pretending it is free is how these projects slip.