Data Entry Standards

Data entry standards have been adopted to facilitate effective management of shared institutional data. Use these standards when searching for a vendor name to ensure success in finding the right name.

The official name of the company/individual will be entered in the Last Name field only once — there should only be one ID number for each organization.

Restricted characters: The following characters must not be used in vendor names:

@ # $ % * “ : ;

Note: The Standards for vendor names are very specific and are intended to be consistent throughout all data forms.

In addition, the following are detailed below:

Organization Name Standards
Person Name Standards
Vendor Name Examples
Commodity Abbreviations For Vendors

Organization Name Standards

The Non-Person (Organization) Name field is a 60-character, free text field.

Organization names should be entered as received from the company or using the “official” corporate name.
Use of Abbreviations: When space limitations require the use of abbreviations, the words at the end of the line should be abbreviated first (work right to left). When abbreviations are necessary, use the following (unless an organization provides information regarding their preferences):

Assn. Association Fdn Foundation

Assoc Associate Inc Incorporated

Assocs Associates Intl International

Co Company Ltd Limited

Conslt Consulting Mfg Manufacturing

Conslts Consultants Publ Publishers

Corp Corporation Soc Society

Dept Department St Saint

Eng Engineering Univ University

Initials and Person Names: When an organization name is the name of a person, enter periods after each initial and no space between double initials.

Example: F.G. Brehmer Foundation

Names should be entered with spaces between the words:

Example: David & Gloria Morris Foundation

Acronyms: Acronyms and universally accepted abbreviations should not use periods.

Example: ABC, NYS Department of Energy

“The” as First Word: Avoid using “The” as the first word in the name (because of sorting).

Example: The Bagelry becomes Bagelry

Use of Commas: Commas should not be used between corporate identifiers:

Example: Elevator Service Company, Inc. becomes
Elevator Service Company Inc

Use of Connective Words: Enter words like and, in, of, for, the etc. in lower case except if they are the first word of the organization name. The use of “and” or “&” should be determined by company preference.

Example: C & N Tractors, Ed and Dick’s Floral Design

Use of Hyphens and Slashes: Do not enter spaces on either side of hyphens or slashes.

Example: K-Bach, Citicorp/Citibank

Universities: Enter University and College names as received/preferred by the institution.

Examples: University of California Santa Cruz
State University of New York, Binghamton

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Person Name Standards

The Person Name fields consist of First Name or Initial, Middle Initial, and Last Name.

Enter names as received from the constituent. Constituent names will be sorted by the last name. Data associated with names will be entered as received from constituents.
Last Name: The last name can be one word (Ruiz) or two words separated by a hyphen (Ruiz-Delaney).
First Name: Enter the formal name in the first name field.
Middle: Enter the middle name or middle initial in this field.
Suffixes: Enter the following suffixes as part of the last name field: Jr., Sr., I, II, III, IV, V.

Vendor Name Examples

First	Middle	Last	Guideline
Bob		Smith	Capitalize first letter of each word
Bobby Joe		Smith	Enter two word first names in first name field
B.	Joe	Smith	Enter single character first name with period, preferred name in middle name field
Donna	Louise	Campos	Use full middle name if appropriate and preferred
Donna	L.	Campos	Enter a period after a middle initial unless the constituent has requested otherwise
Tracy		West Goldman	Enter the name as you receive it from the constituent (i.e., use space between words if they do)
Larry	Carl	Long-Reed	Omit spaces before and after hyphens
Larry	Carl	O’Leary	Omit spaces before and after apostrophes
Larry	Carl	O’Leary III	Enter suffixes as part of the last name field

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Commodity Abbreviations For Vendors

bldg	building	maint	maintenance
equip	equipment	misc	miscellaneous
lab	laboratory	svcs	services