Product Setup > Optional User-Defined Fields

In some cases when records are merged into the consolidated company tables, the document number has to be changed in order to keep it unique. The "document number" is a generic term to refer to the sales order, invoice, service order, purchase order, check number, etc. In these cases, when the document number is changed, it can be a little tricky after the consolidation to know what the original document was and which company it was originally in. There is no way to avoid the change, but you can keep track of the original document and company by adding these two user-defined fields to all the tables where you wish to have access to the original company and original document. Consult with your Sage business partner (reseller) about using Custom Office to add the following fields to all the appropriate tables:

•	ORIGINAL_COMPANY - A three-character string that will hold the original company that the record came from. In the case that a single key (ex. Customer) was in multiple companies but the record is merged, the ORIGINAL_COMPANY will hold the first company encountered that had that record.

•	ORIGINAL_DOCUMENT - At least a ten-character string that will hold original sales order, invoice, service order, purchase order, check number or other unique document number from the original record.

For more information about how various tables are treated when the consolidation is run, check out How Tables are Consolidated.