Three codes, one product
A customer orders the 5 litre cleaning fluid. The office searches and finds three codes: the original, one created when the manufacturer changed the label, and one someone set up for a special order years ago. Stock is split across two of them. The web shop shows one of them as out of stock while there are forty cases on the other.
Your buyer reorders one code because it looks low, when the other code has plenty. The stock count finds cases on a location that belongs to a code nobody uses. And the product list your reps carry has lines that were discontinued long ago.
How product lists fill up with duplicates
New codes are easy to create and hard to retire. Every packaging change, supplier switch, new pack size or special request can produce a new code, and the old one lingers because it has history, open orders or stock attached. Over years, the product list becomes a mix of live lines, duplicates and ghosts.
| How the duplicate appears | Why the old code stays |
|---|---|
| Manufacturer changes packaging | Old stock still on the shelf |
| Switch to a new supplier for the same item | Purchase history on the old code |
| Special order for one customer | Nobody remembers to close it |
| Different pack sizes set up as new items | Not linked to each other |
| Typos in descriptions | Search finds only one of them |
What a messy product list costs
Stock is split, so availability looks worse than it is and buyers overorder. Pickers go to the wrong location. Customers are told a line is out when it is not. Sales reports are misleading because one product's sales are spread across codes. Product data sent to retail customers includes lines you no longer sell. And every new system you consider, from a web shop to a warehouse system, becomes harder to set up.
The clean-up and the rules we put in
- We read your full product list, stock, sales and open orders from your stock system.
- Likely duplicates are found by matching barcodes, supplier codes, pack sizes and similar descriptions, using fuzzy matching and an AI check for descriptions that mean the same thing written differently.
- Candidates are shown in groups for your team to confirm: merge, link as a pack size variant, or keep separate.
- Confirmed merges are carried out safely, with stock, open orders and price agreements moved to the surviving code, and the old code set to inactive rather than deleted, so history is kept.
- Codes with no sales, no stock and no orders for a period you choose are listed for retirement.
- New code creation is guided by a form that checks for existing barcodes and similar descriptions before a code is added.
- A monthly check for new duplicates.
- A clear owner for product data.
- Pack size variants linked rather than separate.
What the product list looks like after
One product, one code, with stock in one place and a single sales history. Search in the office and on the web shop finds the right line. Buyers see the true stock position. Reps carry a list of what you actually sell. And any future project, whether a new web shop or a warehouse system, starts from clean data.
Is your product list like this?
- The same product appears under more than one code.
- Stock is split across codes for the same item.
- Your product list includes lines you stopped selling years ago.
- New codes are created without checking for existing ones.
- Sales reports for a product never quite add up.