Data & systems

Cross-reference

Also called: Identifier mapping · Entity resolution · Xref

Resolving a partner’s identifiers — product, customer, entity — to your own master records so transactions can be matched.

Every channel data problem eventually reduces to this. Your partner’s part number is not your part number; their end-customer code is not your customer ID; their ship-to hierarchy has a different shape from yours. Matching by exact string join fails, and it fails **silently**.

That silence is the whole issue. An unmatched transaction does not error — it lands in a suspense file with no owner, does not accrue, does not count toward a tier, and never appears in a report as missing. Match rates of 82–92% are typical, which means up to one line in six is invisible.

A cross-reference layer holds the mappings, resolves many-to-one relationships, and — critically — surfaces what it cannot resolve as a worked exception queue rather than dropping it.

Related terms

Master data

The authoritative records for customers, products, vendors and organisational entities that every transaction refers to.

POS / sell-through

A channel partner’s report of what they actually sold to end customers, as distinct from what they bought from you.

Revenue leakage

Money that was earned but never collected, or paid out when it was not owed, through failures of process and data rather than of commercial judgement.

EDI 844 / 845 / 867

The standard electronic transaction sets used for chargeback claims (844), contract price authorisations (845) and product-transfer or sell-through reporting (867).

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