Well basically it's hell <g>, I've gone through a number of methods over the last 4 or 5 years, the main problem is inconsistency from manufacturers/suppliers. One thing that I would recommend is to study the products that are going to be used in the system and identify all the possible sizing schemes so they're predetermined, one of the biggest problems I've had so far is item duplicity because of minor (and not so minor) variations as in:

Code Color Size
PT10 Charcoal Grey 14.5 RG
PT10 Charcoal 14-14/12 33

Both records refer to the same item but they where carelessly entered by different people.

In my forms where Items are entered for sale, purchase orders or whatever, the user has to type in a code or the first digits of it, if there's more than one match, a list with the resulting items appears for the user to pick the right one. You can use an autofillable textfield if you are working with straight VFP tables. Once the code is selected, focus goes to a dropdown list wich is populated with the colors available for the selected code, then it goes to a sizes dropdown list populated with the sizes available for the code + color selection. It's very smooth once users get the hang of it.

If created manually (first time entry), the items must be entered as you describe, I have a colors table and a sizes table, colors and sizes must be in them for the item to be created, of course they could be added on the fly but that could backfire with misspelled, or differntly spelled colors or sizes going into the system. I've been thinking of a way to allow the user to simply enter a code, pick colors from a list, and a sizing scheme that can somehow be customized once selected, but the implementation details are still vague.

Recently I've been feeding the items to the system through a text file, I wrote programs to extract the items from the supplier's websites and generate comma separated lists. Of course I still have to deal with inconcistency and lack of updates but it's a big step I believe.

Some manufacturer's do use a code that includes color, and even size, but this is not always the case, and it's not perfect, what I've seen is code + 2 character color code + size as in:

5170WHS (White Small)
5170WHM
5170WHL
5170WHXL
5170RDS (Red Small)
5170RDM

The problem is with items that have combinations of colors, for example a white shirt with different color highlights, or very simillarly named colors, the two character color code is just not enogh. This are just some of the things I've had to deal with.


>Hi,
>Yes.. it works!!!! Thank you.
>
>BTW, do you use matrix form to allow user to select different item in POS, stock in, and other module?
>DO you require user to key in/select ALL colours and size that associated to that product when 1st time create product record? Or records will be auto generated based on available sizes and colours in relevant "preset" table?
>
>Also, As what I know from my client, there is a item code (modelcode + colourcode) from manufacture, isn't it?