Supply chain glossary
Stock Keeping Unit (SKU)
The identifier a company assigns to a separately managed item, and the level at which demand, stock and orders are actually planned.
16. september 2026
2 min
A stock keeping unit (SKU) is the identifier a company assigns in its own master data to a distinct, separately managed item – a given product in a given pack size and variant. An SKU is a record rather than a physical thing, and the way it is defined decides the level at which demand can be forecast, stock counted and orders placed.
An SKU belongs to the company that creates it, unlike a GTIN or EAN barcode registered by the manufacturer. One barcode can sit under two SKUs when an item is managed separately per warehouse; one SKU can carry several barcodes when a supplier changes packaging. Ordering units add a second layer: an item sold in pieces is ordered in cartons or pallets, so a forecast in consumer units turns into an order only after conversion through pack size, MOQ and order multiples.
- SKU – an internal record; the company creates it and chooses its granularity.
- GTIN / EAN – an external identifier of the packaged product, assigned by the manufacturer.
- SKU‑location – the combination that is actually planned: one SKU in one store or warehouse.
SKU in practice
Planning workload is driven by SKU‑location combinations, not by the SKU count. A chain carrying 4,000 SKUs across 200 stores plans 800,000 item‑location pairs; reviewing each of them daily is not a staffing question but an arithmetic one. This is why replenishment runs exception‑based: Veritico STOCK flags only the items that need attention – a stockout, a new item, a promotion – with tagging rules configured per client.
The second place where the SKU definition decides the outcome is a packaging change. The new barcode enters master data as a new SKU with no sales history, and until someone links it to its predecessor, the forecast behaves like new product forecasting. Veritico STOCK handles this through predecessor‑successor links with a configurable share of inherited history – but only if the link is recorded when the item is created.
The SKU is also the unit in which assortment decisions are made: listing and delisting happen per item and store cluster, which is the level Veritico RANGE works at when it builds store‑specific planograms.
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