Anyone have knowledge about numbering schemes? I have to start numbering items that come in at work, and I want something better than “0001”, “0002”, etc. For example, should I include dates (“2023-0001”)?

Someone has to have thought about this before.

@Alligator if you need the numbers to always go up, but it’s ok for there to be gaps between the numbers, you could use the current date and time. A simple way to encode the date & time into a number is the current UNIX timestamp: current-timestamp.com

@pgkr Interesting concept, but it would be hard to identify missing items if they are not sequential.

@odd Hopefully they have ideas!

@Alligator You could include dates, IF the dates would be meaningful information for you later. Otherwise, unnecessary work. If I'm dealing with a numbering scheme, I ask questions like: How big could these numbers get? If I can get away with two digits, that's better than having to use four each time. I also ask, What information do I want to get out of just looking at the number? (Maybe the year is useful after all.) Another question: Can I pre-assign certain numbers? When I did survey research, we coded "don't know" as all 7s, we coded "no answer" as all 9s.

@annahavron Good ideas, thanks.

@ritchie I had considered systems like the one you mentioned. I’ll have to think carefully about how it will be used and who will use it.

@Alligator I think about this a lot, as @odd has figured out. 😉 What about a version of Johnny Decimal? That's what I use and I find it very helpful.

@cygnoir I had considered that. I only have one form that I need to number, so I think Johhny Decimal may be overkill.

@Alligator Ah, OK! This is how I do it with single item batches: Name Differentiator YYYY-MM-DD. So for example, a generic personnel form would be Form 2023-05-13 (no differentiator), and if it were specifically a form for me it would be Form Cygnoir 2023-05-13.

@Alligator Explaining my last reply: My folders have multiple forms inside them, and I like to sort folders by name instead of date, so this gives me groupings of forms by their name and also by subject, then in date order. Hope this makes sense! Happy to elaborate further.

@Alligator In my experience, the differentiator can be a name or a number. So you could do Form 001 2023-05-13 or something like that if you wanted to create a number. Plain numbers to me are difficult; I always want to smush some metadata in there. My differentiators end up being only words/names, like my example, or a word smushed with a number, like Cygnoir001.