What are Characteristics?

Characteristics are attributes which can be assigned to Data Items such as items, item batches, warehouses, zones and locations. They are also used in inventory counts to define the range of items to be counted.

Characteristics can be thought of as extra information about, for example, a product, above and beyond what is available in the item record. As this extra information can vary depending on the stock received, they effectively describe minor variations in a product. The variations are small enough to be worth recording, but not significant enough to justify creating a new record for each variation.

They can be used to determine where an item can be stored. You can assign similar characteristics to a storage location, warehouse or zone and if the characteristics match with those of the item, then it can be stored in that location.

Each characteristic is defined with a particular type of data, that is, Alphanumeric Range, Number Range, Date Range, Discrete Value Alphabetic, Discrete Value Numeric or Logical (Yes or No).