ProClass classification and numbering

I work for NIP who run the London Contracts Register which has used the ProClass classifications to categorise the contracts for the last few years.

When the numbering was introduced to ProClass in the last version (8.2) we thought that it was intended as a way of identifying categories independently of the text description. This would be very useful to us as changes to the text has often happened in the past, and re-categorising existing data was quite tricky before the numerical codes. As was allowing the upload of coded contract and expenditure data to the system; it's somewhat implausible that people would enter a three part text description exactly correctly each time, but there's far more chance with a 6 digit number.

However when we came to implement the new ProClass (8.3) we noticed that the numbers had changed. So that in the new version numbers relate to different categories and vice-versa. I can appreciate why this might be done for neatness (so the numbers are in order in the mostly alphabetical spreadsheet), but I just wanted to flag up how difficult this makes it to actually implement ProClass in a system like ours. There's now no way to identify categories from one version to the next, as both the number or the text may have changed. Further any data previously categorised by the numbers is now made redundant, as these may now not point to the correct category.

I spoke to Terry about this issue and requested that from now on the numbers for each category remain the same, and that any new categories receive new numbers. He suggested that I post this request on the forum to see if anyone would have any comments or objections to this.

I work at Dorset County Council, we are currently working towards migrating to SAP which will go live in October 2009.  In SAP we will be using the Proclass classifications and Proclass numbering, if the numbering is changed during version updates this will cause us a great deal of work.