Setting up my part numbering system ... finally. I have settled on a meaningless, sequentially incremented numbering system where the next part takes the next available number in the list. My question has to do with configurations. What do you all do about configurations?

I can see two options:

1. Each configuration gets it's own part number.
2. The part gets a base part number and the configuration is used as a suffix.

Both have it's advantages and disadvantages.

What is best practice?