Customer part numbers on purchase orders
· 2 minute read · Tim
The item code on a customer’s PO is often theirs, not yours. Catalog mapping is the step that turns a parsed line into a product you can post.
A customer part number is the code on their purchase order. It often is not your SKU. Until that line points at a product in your catalog, you do not have a sales order. You have a transcription.
Their code is not your SKU
Wholesale customers order in their language. A retailer sends the code from their own file. A trade account types a short name the rep used on the phone. A third sends a description and no code at all. Your ERP wants the item you stock, on that customer’s price tier, in a unit you sell.
People who have built this inside an ERP, including a long thread on r/Odoo, end up describing the same table: a direct match when the codes happen to be the same, an alias when the customer has their own code, and a person when neither is confident. The alias table is the asset. The PDF is not.
What a parser returns
A document parser gives you the characters on the page. If the PO says 4401-B, you get 4401-B. It does not know that 4401-B is your product, or that this customer buys it by the carton, or that last quarter they switched the code. Teams who stop at extraction still open the ERP and search the catalog line by line. That is the part of the afternoon that does not shrink.
Save the mapping once
OrderWiz maps what is on the order to your product, on that customer’s price tier. You can save a template per customer for how their order is laid out. The next order from that customer uses it. You can still remap any line before you confirm.
The first order from a new account takes a proper look. The twentieth should not. When a line will not map, it sits in needs review with the ones whose price does not match the tier. It does not post on a guess. How that check works is in price tiers and order entry.
If this is how orders still land on your team, tell us how they come in.
Written by Tim, who built OrderWiz after working in wholesale distribution.
