Barcode Inventory Solutions
What are Barcodes?
Why Use Barcodes?
As a business grows, the need for a barcode inventory system becomes more and more necessary with more inventory to handle. Implementing one now will prepare you for the future and give you several benefits in the meantime!
A barcode inventory system is much more accurate than keeping inventory by hand. Human error can be severely reduced with barcodes and your inventory will have more accurate data. In fact, studies show that a person will make at least one date-entry mistake every 250 keystrokes. A computer has an error rate of one error every 36 trillion characters scanned.
With barcodes, you can easily find out what you have in stock and what you don’t. When a customer buys a product, you can scan the barcode and take it out of your inventory records immediately. You will always have accurate and real-time inventory data so you can make proper business decisions throughout the day.
With barcodes on your inventory, all of your products can be instantly read and data can be easily transferred to a computer. This will make the process of checking a customer out after a purchase much faster. Instead of manually entering each product and figuring out the total price, the computer can do it for you.
Feathers
- Our barcode inventory system is much more inexpensive than people think.
- First, you will need to create a product code. You can have a Universal Product Code (UPC) or stock keeping unit (SKU).
- A UPC can be found on most products and are standardized for business use. To receive a UPC, you can register with Global Standard 1 to get a unique code for your company. This code can be used to identify and track products across the globe.
- A UPC has many benefits. It can protect your company’s brand from theft, allow you to sell on Amazon, allow customers to access information about the product online, and they can be used in most inventory management systems. A UPC is typically 12 digits long and used for external use.
- You also have the option of using a custom SKU number for your products. SKU codes can be created manually or in an inventory management software. A SKU is unique to a company, used for internal operations like keeping track of stock and are typically eight digits. From there, you need to create a barcode for each product code.
- Next, you need to print your barcode. Most standard inkjet and laser printers can print barcodes with a label sheet. However, thermal printers are best for printing barcode labels. The recurring costs for thermal printers are much lower than inkjet and laser printers. Not only that, but thermal printers are very easy to maintain, have a longer run life compared to other printers, and are fast and quiet. Thermal labels do come in a couple of different varieties. If you are new to thermal printers, you might want to check out our go-to guide for printing barcode and shipping labels.