Item and Transaction Levels

Merchandising has a flexible three-level item hierarchy that allows you to choose how to configure your items to best suit your business. You may choose to use all three levels, or you may use only one or two, depending on the types of items you buy and sell. It is also flexible enough to allow you to use different configurations for different parts of your business. For example, if you have a portion of your business that sells clothing that has a style, SKU, and barcode level, you may use all three levels. But, another part of your business may not have the style level, and so you could choose to use only two-level items for that division.

Determining how you want create your items in the various areas of your business is a key implementation activity. As part of that decision, the transaction level - or the level at which key item activities like inventory management occurs - must also be determined. The most common models for items and the transaction level used for each are as follows:

Table 6-2 Item and Transaction Levels

	Level 1	Level 2	Level 3	Transaction Level
Fashion	Style	SKU	Barcode	SKU
Hard-lines	SKU	Barcode	n/a	SKU
Grocery	SKU	Barcode	n/a	SKU
Packs (Simple and Complex)	Pack	Barcode	n/a	Pack

As part of the initial configuration of the solution, you may want to update the labels that Merchandising uses for each of these levels to better suit your business and make it easier for your users to understand which options to select when creating new items. The labels for the levels are managed as codes and can be updated in the Codes and Descriptions download/upload process described in this document. The codes applicable codes are described below.

Transaction Level Descriptions (code type = TLVL)

This code type is used for the transaction level dropdown when a user creates non-pack items, or when searching for items using Item Search.

Table 6-3 Transaction Level Descriptions

Code	Base Descriptions
1	Level 1
2	Level 2
3	Level 3

Item Level Descriptions (code type = ILVS)

This code type is used to populate item level dropdowns in Item Search.

Table 6-4 Item Level Descriptions

Code	Base Descriptions
1	Level 1
2	Level 2
3	Level 3

Pack Item Level Descriptions (code type = PITL)

This code type is used to populate the transaction level dropdown when a user creates a pack or to display the label for a pack item.

Table 6-5 Pack Item Level Descriptions

Code	Base Descriptions
1	Pack
2	Reference Item

Transaction Level 1 Item Level Descriptions (code type = T1IT)

For items that have their transaction level set to level 1, this is the label that is displayed when viewing the item in the Item workflow. This is usually used for hardline and grocery items that don't utilize differentiators.

Table 6-6 Transaction Level 1 Item Level Descriptions

Code	Base Descriptions
1	SKU
2	Reference Item

Transaction Level 2 Item Level Descriptions (code type = T2IT)

This code type is used for display labels for a level 2 transaction item. This is usually used for fashion items that utilize differentiators.

Table 6-7 Transaction Level 2 Item Level Descriptions

Code	Base Descriptions
1	Style
2	SKU
3	Reference Item

Transaction Level 3 Item Level Descriptions (code type = T3IT)

This code type is used for display labels for items that have the transaction level set to level 3. This is a less common item configuration, but may be used when you wish to track inventory at the barcode level in Merchandising.

Table 6-8 Transaction Level 3 Item Level Descriptions

Code	Base Descriptions
1	Style
2	SKU
3	Reference Item