Turkish, Russian and Uzbek item names: one product, one code

Head office opens a fabric as "Poplin shirting, blue", in the local 1C the same fabric stands as "Поплин рубашечный, синий", and the storekeeper writes "ko'ylaklik poplin, ko'k" on the rack. The three names belong to one product, yet in the stock records they can become three separate items. In a count the balances scatter among them and differences appear that do not exist. This article shows how to build one code and a shared name table for each product.

Three names, three items: how the variance arises

An illustrative case: the same poplin has been opened as three items in 1C, and the records read:

• the item with the Russian name: 2,400 m;
• the item with the Turkish name: 1,600 m;
• the item with the Uzbek name: 300 m.

That makes 4,300 metres. The counting team sees a single pile on the rack; because the label is in Turkish, it writes the whole pile, 4,300 metres, against the Turkish item. The variance table then shows −2,400 m on the Russian item, +2,700 m on the Turkish item (4,300 − 1,600) and −300 m on the Uzbek item. The net difference is −2,400 + 2,700 − 300 = 0, while the gross difference is 2,400 + 2,700 + 300 = 5,400 metres. Physically nothing is missing; yet the table has three variance lines and hours of phone calls to explain them.

The code is the key, the name is an attribute

The answer is to identify a product by its code, not by its name. Each product gets one shared code, and the Turkish, Russian and Uzbek names sit side by side as attributes of that code. The columns of the shared table are:

• shared code (never changes);
• Turkish name (head office);
• Russian name (as seen in 1C);
• Uzbek name (as spoken in the warehouse);
• main unit and barcode;
• status: active or obsolete.

One row of the table reads like this: the product with code KMS-214 is "Poplin shirting, blue" at head office, "Поплин рубашечный, синий" in 1C and "ko'ylaklik poplin, ko'k" in the warehouse; its main unit is the metre and its status is active. The code does not change, while a name may. A new item is opened only through this table; if a product is not in the table, it is added there first. Giving one person the authority to open items largely prevents duplicate records.

Small traps in the code

A few details can cause big problems:

• The Latin "A" and the Cyrillic "А" look the same on screen but are different characters; if they get mixed in a code, searching in 1C returns nothing. Write codes only with Latin letters and digits.
• The apostrophe in the Uzbek letters o' and g' can be typed with different characters, so the same name falls outside a search as if it were two records. Write down in the table which mark is to be used.
• In Turkish the dotted İ and the dotless I are different letters, so in Excel "POPLİN" and "POPLIN" may not match. Use the code, not the name, for searching and matching.

On the count sheet and on the rack

On the count sheet, print the shared code large and the three names small beneath it, and have the team record by code, not by name. The rack label should carry the same code. A storekeeper who reads Russian and an auditor who reads Turkish then meet on the same line. After the count, do not delete the old duplicate items at once; set them to "obsolete" and decide with the accountant how their balances are moved to the shared code.

Transition: where to start

Do not try to convert the whole item list at once. Start with the 100 items that move most, since duplicates pile up where movement is heavy. Prepare the table in the first week, review it with the warehouse and accounting in the second, and from the third week open new items only from the table. Add the remaining items a few at a time at each count.

In short

In a three-language business a name should be only the label of a code. In its labelling, barcode and record service StockSystem reduces mixed or duplicate items to a single code and matches the Russian and Uzbek item names in 1C with what is seen on site; the decision to merge them and the posting of the correction stay with you.