Item Master

A released sellable code — one variant of a family, not the configured instrument.

An item code is a released finished good in a family: FEMFM0000006 is a DN50 electromagnetic flowmeter, not a particular lining or output.

Item code versus model number

These two identifiers must never be conflated.

A customer RFQ that says “DN50 EMF, SS 316 lining, 4–20 mA” is asking for one item code (the DN50) and a configuration. The lining and output are not extra item codes.

What a released code carries

• Variant value — DN50, 0–1 bar, 1500 mm, 2 set points, depending on the family’s axis.

• Variant qualifier — a non-size fork some codes also pin (IBR, Double Window). Null when the code varies by size alone.

• Nominal bore (mm) — filled only when the axis is a real bore. Inch threads are not converted by arithmetic; they stay a trade name.

• HSN — required on finished goods. Raw and semi-finished items are never sold, so they need no HSN. The picker states the GST rate each classification attracts, so the rate is visible while choosing rather than only after.

• Unit and list price — one price for the code’s size or, in a family priced by flow range, a list of price bands: one price per flow range at that size (≤ 50 LPM — ₹1,750, 50–150 LPM — ₹2,050). A code carries one or the other, never both, and the form asks which. In such a family a code without a unit price opens on price bands; one already priced as a single figure stays on it until switched. Either may be absent; an unpriced line still makes a quotation unpriced until a price is entered. A band the Pricing Library has rates against cannot be removed until those rates are, and the Pricing Library has no control that removes a rate yet.

  Bands are entered lowest first, in one flow unit chosen once for all of them, and run back to back: only the first band’s lowest flow is typed — it may be left open, reading “up to” its highest — and every later band starts where the one before it ends. There are no gaps and no overlaps, so each flow has exactly one price.

  Copy From fills the bands from another code in the same family that already has them: every band’s range and price, and their flow unit. It replaces any bands the code has, after asking, and the copy can then be edited like bands typed by hand. A band whose range and unit the copy leaves unchanged keeps the Pricing Library rates priced against it. Nothing is saved until the item is.

• Measuring range — the duty this code reads, as a lowest and a highest flow in one unit. A rotameter is chosen by the duty it must measure rather than by bore alone, so the range is what decides whether a size suits an enquiry.

  It is optional: a code carries a highest flow and a unit together, or neither. The lowest flow may be left open, reading “up to” the highest. Flows may be negative.

  On a code priced by price bands the range is not typed: it is the span of the bands, from the first band’s lowest flow to the last band’s highest, and it follows them whenever they change. Until the first band is added, the code keeps whatever range it already had.

  Codes whose family has a published sizing table keyed the same way its codes are — metal tube rotameter, turbine, electromagnetic and oval gear — arrive with their ranges already filled from that table. Every other family starts empty, and the range is filled in as the client publishes it.

• Standard model number — the composed number at this code’s default configuration, snapshotted from a specific master version. The version is kept with the code, but nothing on screen marks a snapshot as stale once the master moves on.

  It is composed, never typed. Releasing a code shows it read-only: the family’s model prefix followed by one option code per coded position, in position order. To change it, change the configuration underneath it — or the family’s datasheet. A number typed by hand would carry a version stamp saying it was composed from a master it never came from.

  A position whose menu marks no default cannot be composed, so it is left out and the code records how many are missing. The number is short by exactly those positions, and the screen says so while releasing. That is a gap in the family’s datasheet, not in the code.

How a new code gets its number

The number is generated, not typed. A code is F, the item group’s prefix, then a seven-digit running number: the acrylic body rotameter family (prefix ABRM) runs FABRM0000001, FABRM0000002, and so on. Releasing a code takes the highest number already in the family, plus one.

Every family has its own run, starting at 1, so any family can release a code the day it is created. Because the prefix is inside every code, it is frozen once the family has one: the item group screen locks it, and the server refuses the change.

The number is only settled when the code is saved. What the screen shows beforehand is the next number as things stand; two people releasing at once get consecutive numbers, not the same one.

Moving a code to another family gives it a new number. Changing the item group on an existing code shows the next code in the new family’s run, and saving takes it; the old number is not reused. The code moves onto the new family’s datasheet, and a rate in the Pricing Library that cites the old code is updated to cite the new one. Switching back to the original family before saving keeps the original code. A code typed by hand is kept as typed.

A move is refused, and the code left as it was, when:

• the code answers any option differently from its datasheet — reset those answers to the datasheet’s defaults first, since they belong to the old datasheet;
• the new family is inactive, or has no active datasheet;
• the code has price bands and the new family is not priced by flow range — switch it to a single price first;
• the Pricing Library has rates priced against the code’s price bands. The message says to remove them first; no screen removes a rate yet.

FlowOS issues these numbers; they are not the ERP’s stores-master codes. Handing a code over to the ERP means adding it to the stores master there.

Rows the datasheet decides for you

Some answers follow from others. A brass-glass rotameter with MS wetted parts takes an acrylic scale; the same body in SS 316 or PP takes an aluminium one. The datasheet states that as a rule, so the standard configuration fills the scale in for you and says which answer drove it.

Changing the answer it depends on changes it again. When an item code is edited so that a deciding header moves to a choice no mapping names, the mapped header goes back to its own default rather than keeping the answer a mapping left behind, unless that header was set by hand on the code. The menu offers only the answers the datasheet allows for the rest of the configuration (R60): with MS wetted parts, only the acrylic scale. Where the datasheet allows several, it fills in the one it marks default and you may pick another. An answer you set by hand stays set; if a later change makes it one the datasheet no longer allows, the menu marks it not allowed and the code cannot be saved until it is changed.

This is also why a few menus mark two options as the default: the rule is what picks between them.

Defaults

A code can carry default option selections (the family’s usual build for that size). On a quotation they decide which options the code’s price already includes. A line’s options themselves start from the family datasheet, in the order R34 gives, not from the code’s selections.

Finding a code

The search box matches a code’s name and item code, not its model number. Each word typed must appear somewhere in one of them, in any order, and spaces and punctuation are ignored — bypass 125nb finds “By-Pass Glass Tube Rotameters 125NB”. Closer matches come first: an exact name or code, then names that start with the search, then names holding it as one phrase, then names holding every word apart, and last the codes matched on a word their name does not carry. Within a rank, the name where the first word appears earliest wins.

Viewing a code

The eye button in each row’s Actions column, ahead of the pencil, opens the code read-only. Anyone who can see the list can open it, whether or not they may edit codes, and nothing on it can be changed — the pencil beside it is still the way to edit.

It shows the same three groups as the edit form:

• Identity — the item code, name and status, the standard model number and the datasheet it was composed against, the family, the variant and whether the code is a finished or semi-finished good. A code whose model number is short of positions is marked Incomplete, with the count.
• Classification & pricing — the HSN, unit, measuring range, and either the one unit price or the price bands, each with its flow range.
• Standard configuration — only the options the code answers differently from its datasheet, each with its option code and label. A code that follows its datasheet throughout has no such group.

Deleting codes

Deleting is for codes that should never have existed — a mistaken release or a bad import. A code that has been used is retired instead (turn it inactive), so anything that names it still resolves.

Anyone allowed to delete catalogue items sees a checkbox on each row. Ticking one or more, or the header box for the whole page, shows Delete N items above the table. Ticks cover the page on screen only and clear when the page, search or item-group filter changes. A code with limitations recorded against it is kept, and the result says how many were kept. A code whose price bands the Pricing Library has rates against is kept too, though the result counts it as already gone.

What the business does here

• Release a new size when the family needs another variant on the axis.
• Attach HSN to finished codes.
• Retire a code rather than deleting it — issued quotations still name it. Delete only codes released by mistake.

Do not create a new item code for a lining, an output, or a connection. Those are option positions on the decodification master.

Related: Item Group Master · Quotation builder · Setting up catalogue data.