Are you running a warehouse? Operating an Amazon store? You should know how do barcodes work. If you notice, most products in stores or supermarkets have barcodes for a purpose, not just for display. Here is everything you need to know about works, how do they work, and where to purchase them.
What Is A Barcode?
A barcode consists of spaces, bars, numbers, and characters that are machine-readable for quick identification of the products. It is commonly seen in packages in products sold in convenience stores and supermarkets. With the many items sold in supermarkets, how do store owners monitor all their products? It’s with the use of barcodes.
Barcoding is easy to use and an easy-to-implement process to take control of the inventory system. If you’re a store owner, you should understand how to barcodes work, so you can better monitor your products.
How Do Barcodes Work
Barcodes are unique codes that represent one single entity. This entity can be a book, dining ware, perfume, or a piece of clothing that needs unique specifications. In your Amazon store, you can give each product that you’re selling whatever code you want.
A UPC barcode (Universal Product Code) is a specific type of code widely used in the US, Canada, Europe, and many other countries. It consists of 12 characters, to uniquely identify a trade product. It was created to help supermarkets to speed up the checkout process so they can track their inventory efficiently.
How Are The Lines Scanned?
The modern one-dimensional barcode reads using a laser scanner that can detect the pattern. When the laser sweeps across the barcode, it absorbs the light and the rest reflects. That is why it’s only in black and white. There is the absorption of black lines and the reflection of white lights. The scanner detects the light, which is translated into digits or data. Using the numbers, the information retrieved in the computer database.
What About The Lines?
Now you know how the lines are scanned, but what do the numbers underneath the line do? First of all, barcodes have a twelve-digit number, printed under the parallel lines. Here’s what the number represents:
- 1st Number: The Product Type
- 2nd to 6th Number: The Manufacturer Code
- 7th to 11th Number: The Product Code
- Final Number or 12th Number: Check Digit or the Self-Policing System
Advantages of UPC Barcodes
Universal Product Codes have many advantages to consumers as well as business owners. It makes it possible for a barcode scanner to identify quickly a product and its price. Having UPC barcodes in a product is an easier and faster way for store owners to take inventory of their products.
It improves efficiency, productivity and requires lesser manpower as compared to manually encoding a product. It also makes it easier to manually counting products on shelves or warehouses. Why count by hand and manually just to monitor your products if you can use barcodes?
Having a UPC barcode on a particular product is easier for store owners to monitor any defective items in case of a recall or return. UPC barcodes allow products to be tracked through manufacturing, production, and distribution to shops and even consumers.
Why Do I Need A UPC Code?
UPC barcodes are an essential tool for manufacturers and shop owners to keep track of the product that’s going in and out of their stores. Furthermore, barcodes are required to be on a product’s packaging to monitor as required by Amazon. So if you plan to sell products on Amazon, you’re going to need UPC barcodes for your products.
Design Considerations For Barcodes
There are a few things to consider when designing barcodes. This is for them to look good and work properly with scanners.
- Size: Size matters when it comes to UPC barcodes.
- Resolution: Size and resolution matter in UPC barcodes. It can be hard for thermal scanners to read barcodes if it doesn’t have high resolution.
What Next?
Now that you know how do barcodes work, what’s next? Where do you purchase barcodes for your Amazon store? Look no further! You’re here at Unique Product Codes, and we can help you with your barcode needs. All you have to do is contact us, tell us what you need, what products you have, so we can provide you with affordable barcode bundles,
