The Class field is a 16 character, indexed, alphanumeric field and may be used to enter items on transactions and to sort items in Lookup Lists and on Reports. Class is the default display field in the left-most column on the Sales Invoice Item Entry screen.
The Class field is virtually identical to Product Code except it is limited to only 16 characters. The only other difference between these two fields is how they are used on standard Form Files and Reports. Mainly due to lack of space, Class in not included on many standard Form Files and some report formats.
The Class field may be used in a number of different ways.
Class is commonly used to define a type or group of Inventory Items (and not uniquely identify a particular item), by containing the same value on multiple records. It can be used to represent the Department, Category, or Location Codes in order to provide the ability to look up and sort items by those codes.
As another example, in book stores, the Class Field may be used to record the author (also use Description for title, Product Code for ISBN, and Manufacturer for publisher).
The Class field may also contain a personal coding scheme for use in locating Inventory items. It might include abbreviations, acronyms, or any other personal numbering or coding scheme as an alternate way of looking up and/or sorting items.
The Class may uniquely identify individual items, or the same Class may identify multiple items, and display them in the Which One? Lookup List from which the correct item may be identified by its Description. To ensure that no two items are assigned the same Class when entering new Class, enable the Unique Indexes parameter for the Inventory Class field (Configuration Manager, Setup, Database Settings).
Format: 16 alphanumeric characters.
Indexing: Indexed
See:
Inventory Database - Main Screen Fields