Can the MPN be the same as the UPC
Good morning lovely people 
I fear I may have made a time-consuming mistake last night!
Generally, when listing products I use the manufacturers/suppliers MPN for the UPC (if no alternative EAN etc is available) but last night while pouring through our self-copied listings I found that some of our listings were carrying an old MPN on the Details page, and so I went about matching them with the latest UPC/MPN that I had used when copying them to a new product, and then went off on a major mission to check all listings regardless of them being copied or not and started to match all product UPC’s to MPN’s until about halfway through I thought …errr…should I even be doing this? Should the MPN match the UPC in the first place?..
My weary common sense told me that if I’ve used an MPN as a UPC in the first place then surely this is fine?
I’ve tried to look this up on previous forum threads but can only find individual Q&A’s soley regarding UPC’s or MPN’s.
Apologies for the jumbled post but I hope it makes some sense?! I was on the above mission until around 4am this morning so a little bit fuzzy today!
Many thanks in advance
Lee…bypassing cups of coffee and now eating the Gold Blend straight from the jar instead 
14 replies
Seller_nJIsCxkWkBGlh
Well, the UPC is specified by GS1. So unless the manufacturer happens to have used their GS1-supplied UPC as their part number, (which is unlikely), they’re not the same thing. Amazon are apparently on a campaign to check the validity of all the GTINs in the catalogue… so this might cause problems for you when they get round to looking at your inventory?
Seller_0Amk0hnQkPWMH
Unlikely that a manufacturer will use the official EAN (UPC) as their part number (MPN) - and you should not be using MPN as the EAN (or making them up) because Amazon will reject them. If your items do not have an EAN bar code number on them, then only official EANs purchased from GS1 UK are allowed.
Seller_9gxLEcl5fL4JO
As others have said, part numbers rarely follow official UPC/EAN code and are usually separate. Depending on the type of products you sell, you could request these numbers from the manufacturer because if they are supplying to UK they should already have these. Of course if we are talking generic products from overseas you will just have to buy the codes yourself.
I hope I understood correctly but depending on your system and database you use for your products outside of Amazon, you could possibly set up an SKU system for each item instead of constantly changing your amazon listings when a supplier changes a part code. E.g.:
Item being sold is a blue hat. This is assigned an SKU = HATB which is the SKU you use to list the product on Amazon (EAN separate of course)
Your supplier part number for this item is 123456
Your SKU is kept on internal system and the supplier reference is assigned in the background so when you want to re-order, it will order from that supplier with 123456. When your supplier decides to change their part number to ABCDE, all you have to do is update it in your own system, as long as the product has not changed of course. You will still be listing HATB but your reference when you order from the supplier will become ABCDE instead.
Hope this makes sense and perhaps this situation wouldn’t suit your business but works for us due to a large inventory and if we had to go changing all of our listings every time the manufacturer changes their part number we would never stop.
