Product Aliases
Product Aliases allow you to have multiple identities for a Product, without changing the Part Number or Product Name. Every lookup field for Part Number or Product Name will search the database for those values and also will search for any matching Product Aliases. Primarily these would be used in Sales Order and Purchase Order entry.
Aliases come in very handy when your Vendors, your Customers and users within your own company all refer to any given Product by a different name.
Product record
To create Product Aliases, navigate to Warehouse Management > Products. Open a Product record and go to the Aliases tab.
Click the + symbol to enter a new Alias. The only required field is the Alias itself. If you're entering the first Alias, it will automatically be tagged as the "Primary" Alias -- this just means it is the first one that will show up in the list when the Alias is used for the product lookup.
Tips:
- You can have as many Aliases as you need for each Product.
- Aliases can be reused across multiple different Products.
- Aliases can be imported using the Product Alias Import Wizard.
Example 1 - multiple aliases per product
From the above Product record example, notice I have two Aliases that begin with the letter 'g'.
If I type the letter 'g' into the Part Number lookup field on a Sales Order, the system will find any Part Number or Alias that begins with 'g'. In this case there are two Aliases, both for the same Widget Product.
If I were to type the full word "Gadget", the system would auto-populate the WDGT Part Number because that is the only Part Number that has that word as an Alias.
This is a very basic example. In this sample database I have not added any Part Numbers that actually begin with the letter 'g'. Therefore, the only ones you see here are the two Aliases from the screenshot above.
If I typed the letter 't' instead, the system would auto-populate the WDGT product because there is only one Product or Alias that begins with 't'.
Example 2 - same alias reused across multiple products
In this example, I've done something slightly different. I have now added the Alias "Gizmo" to four different Product records AND I've created a totally different Product record where the Part Number = Gizmo.
When I type "Gizmo" in the Part Number lookup field on a Sales Order and press the tab key, the system will show me a list of every Product that contains "Gizmo" as either an Alias or Part Number. You can see five Products; four with the Alias = Gizmo and one with the Part Number = Gizmo.
Notice how the Gizmo product has no Alias? That's because Gizmo is its real name.
This is somewhat of an extreme example used only to illustrate the point that Aliases can be reused across more than one Product. We are not suggesting to set up your Products with repeated Aliases like this. Aliases are NOT intended to be a *categorical organizing tool. They're just used for product lookups.
*If all of these parts simply just exist in the same category, then Product Category would be a better identifier for that purpose.
Example 3 - aliases linked to specific Clients
In this example we have three different Aliases for the same Product and each is linked to a different Client. When a Product Alias is entered on a line item on the Sales Order, the system will validate the Alias against the Client who the order belongs to.
- The same Alias CAN NOT be linked to more than one Client within the same Product.
- If a Product Alias should apply to multiple Clients, then leave the Linked Client Name field blank.
- The same Alias CAN be linked to more than one Client across different Products.
- Multiple Aliases CAN be linked to the same Client within the same Product.
