Creating SKU numbers enhances your inventory control efficiency and boosts sales by leveraging customer experience. Here’s how to generate SKU numbers for your company:
Step 1: Start with a top-level identifier
The beginning of each SKU should represent a top-level identifier in 2-3 characters. This is the most general classification that a product belongs to. Top-level identifiers can be a department, product category, or supplier. Based on the identifier, you can quickly locate any products in your store at a glance.
Step 2: Assign unique identifier in the middle numbers
Next, take the middle section of the SKUs to add unique features, such as size, color, subcategory to your item. Think about which product attributes are important to you and make sense when organizing your products.
Step 3: Complete the SKU with a sequential number
Use a sequential number to finish your SKU, like 001, 002, 003. It identifies older items versus newer items in your inventory and makes counting stock effortless. Therefore, no matter how many products you need to organize, the SKU lets you know which items have been in stock for longer and should be prioritized for promotion.
Step 4: Input the SKUs to your POS or inventory management system
Imagine you’re growing and having thousands of products, it’s not efficient to manage SKUs manually. Instead, a POS or an inventory management system will allow you to create and input all product data you want to track in a centralized database. The data can include product name, category, product description, price, SKU number, and any variations like sizes, colors, vendors. In addition, you can add the SKU to each product page, so you’ll know which products are generating the most sales and how many items you got left in your warehouse.
Step 5: Create SKU barcodes
After adding SKU codes to your inventory system, the system will automatically create a barcode for each item. A barcode is a scannable version of SKU and should be attached to the label of each product. Thus, whenever you scan a barcode for checkout, the system will update which item is just sold, which makes it easier to control your inventory.
