Creating SKUs, barcodes and printing tags

Hi again

Just started another thread with another enquiry. Here's my second one.

In our store we will be selling books, wares and others things, and we want to be able to scan the barcodes so items will come up quickly when customers are paying - and for better stock management.

We first thought of using the original barcodes on the books and other products, but I think it will be better to start generating our own SKU numbers and printing our own barcodes with the prices to stick on the books and products.

We will be using Square as our POS and inventory management.

I would be super thankful if anyone can lead us in the right direction to generate SKU numbers, barcodes and label printing. We are new to this and have found some very expensive solutions.

Thank you all!

David.

Hi David,

You can use a free app on your phone. Or there are free websites to generate barcodes also.

But I don’t understand why you don’t want to use the product barcodes directly. You will need a label printer for your barcodes and it isn’t cheap to replace the sticker rolls.

Hi again @VoIPSmart !

thanks for this reply too. You are right, we could use the manufacturer’s barcode, but have our own SKUs. I am confused by all the terminology and barcoding and all, so I guess I can still create our own SKU numbers and link them to the manufacturer’s barcode to be able to scan them at checkout.

thanks a lot!

Hi David,

I have a bit of experience in this space after implementing a POS system for a health food store. With (currently) nearly 5,000 unique products in the database, we needed a way to print shelf labels very easily as product pricing in this space can change often.

Unfortunately, there weren't many POS offerings with this feature, particularly for a small business just starting out, trying to keep costs low.

In the end, I decided to use a POS with API access allowing me to write a custom application for managing shelf labels. The system could be synchronised as often as required and products that had a price change would be flagged as requiring a print. The system could be configured to generate a barcode on any variable; I chose to use a product code. In the latest version, I've implemented a CSV upload option which makes it possible to use another POS system.

Anyway, if you'd like to pick my brain for a bit, I'll be happy to discuss what I know - feel free to reach out.

Thank you for your feedback and help, @micknewman ! For now, we decided to use Square and we will start using the manufacturers barcodes. we only have about 250 book titles and 50 other products for sale. Hopefully we do increase the number of products in the next couple of years and then we could justify printing our own barcodes and creating our own SKUs.

Thanks