Feature Overview: Barcodes
Barcodes are important in Yellow Dog Inventory because they provide a fast, accurate way to identify and track items across receiving, sales, and inventory counts. They reduce manual entry errors, speed up processes, and ensure consistent product identification throughout the system. This improves efficiency and accuracy in managing stock.
Barcode are typically used by Retail client to ring items up at the point-of-sale or scanned during physical inventories to collect inventory counts.
- Visual Representation: A barcodes is a visual interpretation of the manufacturer UPC (Universal Product Number) or the Yellow Dog SKU.
- To read the manufacturer barcode, UPCs must be collected and assigned to the inventory item.
- If a product does not have a manufacturer barcode—or if you prefer to print custom labels—barcodes based on the Yellow Dog SKU can be generated and printed directly from Yellow Dog Inventory.
- Enables Product Scanning: Barcodes quickly identify and retrieve information about a product serving multiple functions:
- In the Point-of-Sales it enable items to be rang in quickly. This sales information is then sent to Yellow Dog where quantities are depleted.
- In Yellow Dog, they allow users to collect counts during physical inventory by scanning the barcode.
Barcode Terminology
- Bars & Spaces: The dark, non-reflective bars and light, reflective spaces that form the barcode pattern
- Bar Code Character: A single group of bars and spaces that represents a specific individual number, letter, punctuation mark, or other symbol. This is the smallest subset of a bar code symbol that contains data
- Check Character / Digit: A mechanically calculated number included within a string of data whose value is used for the purpose of performing a mathematical check to ensure that the barcode message is scanned and read correctly
- Symbology: Device settings that determine which types of barcodes can be read by a device.
- UPC (Universal Product Code): A scannable barcode found on product packaging that contains a unique identification number.
Barcode Formats
Yellow Dog users can select four barcode formats when customizing print templates.
Code 39
- This is a simple barcode format, that can encode letters, numbers, and special characters. Can encode a total of 43 characters.
- Does not contain check digits
- Compatible with nearly all barcode readers
- This format requires more space because each character has its own code.
Code 128
- This format encodes letters, numbers, and special characters and is specifically designed to reduce the amount of space the barcode occupies. Ideal for longer SKUs/UPCs and can encode 108 characters. 103 for data, and 5 for start/stop check
- This format contains a check digit
- This is the most commonly used format by Yellow Dog clients
Code 128C
- This is a subset of Code 128 and are designed for numbers specifically and will only work for SKUs with an even number of digits because this format groups digits in pairs. When this format is used with SKUs that have an odd number of digits it will add a leading 0 to make the set of digits even.
- This format works well with longer SKUs/UPCs
Interleaved 2 of 5
- This format only works with numbers and cannot be used with letters
- Like Code128C this format requires an even number of digits and will pad a leading 0 if the number of digits is odd.
- Can accommodate longer SKUs/UPCs
Additional Common Formats
The above four formats are available in Yellow Dog, however there are many more Barcodes that can be accounted for in a devices Symbology settings. The most used types are – UPC A, UPC E, and ISBN-13(EAN13).
UPC A
- This is simple short format, that can be read by almost all barcode scanning devices
- This format should be utilized with 12-digit SKUs/UPCs
- This format does contain a check digit
- This format does not support letters, or special characters
UPC E
- This format should be utilized with 8-digit SKUs/UPCs, and is condensed version of UPC A.
- This is ideal for jewelry labels
- This format includes a check digit
- This format does not support letters, or special characters
ISBN-13
- This format was designed for books and publications
- ISBN = International Standard Book Number
- The UPC identifies the language group, publisher and title
- This format should be used with 13-digit UPCs assigned to books and publications
- This format does include a check digit
- This format does not support letters or special characters
EAN-13
- EAN = European Article Number
- This format is like UPC-A, and includes a GS1 Prefix (Country Code)
- This format includes a check digit
- This format does not support letters or special characters
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