If you’ve shopped for groceries or purchased something from a shop, checked into a building or had a ticket scanned for an event, then you’ve used barcodes. They’re critical parts of many businesses, and ensure effective workflows, stocktake and inventory tracking, and effective service. Whether you’re a new business or require an upgrade for an existing system, here’s what you need to know about barcode inventory tracking systems.
What to know about barcode inventory systems?
Inventory systems utilise a unique barcode to track the location of an item or a stock of items, communicating that information into an interface and ensuring accurate counts of inventory. Each barcode helps to identify stock, as well as transfer in and out stocks to differing warehouses, shops or vendors. Essentially, it keeps you in control of your stock and helps you organise your business.
Why you need it
Aside from the obvious importance of being able to easily scan a product for customers, and manage sales, there are a lot more reasons why barcodes help business.
Warehousing inventory
Warehouses with thousands of products, unique products, variants, boxes with a large number of different styles, these all benefit from effective inventory tracking software. With the right system, you can manage your warehouse’s stock. Counting and tracking manually runs the risk of human error while tracking systems ensure data is tracked appropriately.
Vendors and retailers
Maybe you aren’t a customer facing business, but if you sell your products to vendors or retailers the odds are, they have their own barcodes, and they’ll need you to either comply to these or create your own. This helps them recognise the supply and demand of your products as well as organise different vendors.
Workflows and guidelines
Without workflows, things can get messy. Systems with rigid processes will need to be complied with or else tracking will be incorrect. Regulated workflows and tracking mean holding people accountable and being able to recognise whether there are blockages and where these blockages are.
Identifying variants and necessary details
When you sell stock with variants, size, colour, make, etc., it needs to be clear to staff what the product is, as it might not be necessarily visible when packaged. Barcode systems help software track items, but barcodes also help workers read and determine the variant they’re stocking. So, with a unique barcode, there should include a small description for employers.
How to choose your system
The main factors to choose your barcoding system is knowing your business size, the number of variants and stock, and what your inventory pain points are. From there you can look at the form and type of scanner, as well as determine the best fit barcode printer. Generally speaking, codes can be one dimensional (the unique combination of numbers/letters paired with the black lines you would be familiar with) or two dimensional (squares or rectangles with lines and dots). Handheld scanners help with heavy supply, while groceries tend to use desktop scanners for faster checking of each product. Speak to a specialist if you aren’t sure, the team at Barcode Labels are always available to help.
Let’s get started on streamlining your inventory tracking today!
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