What is a Customer Part Number in Prophet 21?
Essentially customer part number allows you to create an item “alias” in Prophet 21 that matches customer Item IDs for large or custom orders. Setting up a custom part number for individual customers ensures they can use their own item names to place an order for your products. For your bigger customers, you’re doing yourself a favor.
The last place I worked, we had a company doing millions of dollars of business. They were purchasing many derivative parts—with unique finishes, different bolting patterns, and varying gasket thicknesses. It’s both very simple and very complex at the same time and very easy to mess up.
Especially in such complex scenarios, it is well worth your time to enter all the individual customer part numbers.
How to use Customer Part Number Maintenance in Epicor’s Prophet 21:
In addition to manually entering individual numbers through the Customer Part Number Maintenance screen in Prophet 21, you can also import Customer Part Numbers. However, you cannot mass delete them without a special custom-made tool that somebody could make for you.
Example: The customer has an Item ID of Test Washer. However, in our system, the item ID is BND 0091-0.
After you set up the customer part number, once you enter an order as Test Washer, it will pull the initial (BND 0091-0) item up below it. It will also have a note by default on the order including both the “ordered as” number and the customer’s item number.
And that part number automatically flips in Order Entry. Order Acknowledgement will also have a notation of “ordered as,” so it will show your part number and the customer’s. Finally, when you receive a new Purchase Order, you can key in exactly what the customer entered on the order. And if it doesn’t work, you know it’s a part you don’t have set up in your system, and you can rectify that.
Recapping Customer Part Number in Epicor’s Prophet 21:
In utilizing customer part number maintenance, you’re creating less friction in order entry and at your customer’s accounts payable level. These are all good things.
It takes time to set these numbers up, but there are a lot of instances where (for lack of a better metaphor) the juice is worth the squeeze. 🍊🧃
