Barcodes have an odd reputation among small shop owners. Some assume they're only for supermarkets. Others buy a scanner before they've even written down what they sell, then wonder why nothing got easier.
The honest answer is that plenty of small shops don't need barcodes yet, and a few need them badly. This is a guide to working out which kind of shop you run, and what to do if it turns out to be the second kind.
What a barcode actually is
Strip away the mystery and a barcode is a name tag. The stripes (or the squares, in a QR code) stand for one product, and that's all they do. The barcode doesn't contain the price. It doesn't know the product's name either. It holds a short code, and your records are where that code gets matched to a name, a price and a count of what's left.
That's worth knowing before you spend anything, because it means a barcode is only as useful as the list behind it. Scan a code with no list and all you get back is the code.
When you can skip them
If you sell a few dozen things and can tell them apart at a glance, a notebook or a simple spreadsheet is fine. Nobody needs a sticker to know a mug from a bag of tea. The time you'd spend on labels is better spent on a weekly stock count, which does more for you than any barcode. We cover how to do that in How to Keep Track of Stock Without a Computer or Internet.
Barcodes start to earn their keep when two or more of these are true:
- You sell more than a hundred different products.
- Several products look alike, such as the same item in different sizes or flavours.
- More than one person serves customers or counts stock.
- Counting the shelves takes most of a day.
- You sometimes ring up the wrong product at the till.
Here is why those matter:
Lookalike products are the big one. A 500g bag of tea and a 1kg bag of the same tea are two lines in a notebook, and at six in the evening, with a queue, somebody will pick the wrong one. Give each size its own barcode and that mix-up gets much harder to make.
Several people is the quieter problem. One person writes "Masala Tea", another writes "Tea masala", a third writes "M. tea", and your records quietly split one product into three. A code is spelled the same way every single time.
As for the stocktake, scanning each item instead of writing out its name is quicker, and it can't misspell anything.
If you ticked none of those, keep the notebook and keep your Saturday.
The three kinds you'll meet
You'll see three kinds of barcode in shops, and the right one depends on what you're labelling.
| Type | What it looks like | Use it for |
|---|---|---|
| Code 128 | Bars that can hold letters, numbers and symbols | Your own product codes, like TEA-001 |
| EAN-13 or UPC-A | Bars above a 13-digit or 12-digit number | Products that need a standard number |
| QR code | A square pattern | Web links and longer text, and any phone can read it |
Most small shops end up using Code 128 for their own products. You choose the code yourself, it's easy to type and sort, and nobody has to approve it.
Packaged goods already have one
If you resell packaged goods like soap, biscuits or bottled drinks, they already have a barcode on the pack. Don't make a new one. Scan the existing code and attach it to that product in your list. Print your own labels only for things that have none: loose goods, things you repackage and things you make yourself.
People sometimes worry that a code they made themselves isn't "real". For your own shop, it's as real as it needs to be. Any scanner will read it, and any consistent code works.
Official product numbers come from GS1, the organisation that manages them, and you only need those if a large retailer or an online marketplace asks for them. If you do make EAN-13 numbers for your own use, start them with a 2. Numbers that begin with 2 are set aside for in-store use, so they can't clash with a real product's number.
Setting up in a weekend
You don't have to label everything. Start small and see whether it helps.
- Pick your top twenty. Choose the products that sell most, not the whole shop.
- Give each one a boring code. TEA-001 and TEA-002 beat anything clever. Clever codes that mean something tend to stop meaning it after a few months, and then nobody can read them.
- Put the list in a spreadsheet. Four columns are enough: code, name, price and how many labels you want.
- Make the labels. Paste or upload the list into our free barcode and label generator, choose the sticker sheet you have, and download the PDF.
- Print a test on plain paper first. Hold it against a sticker sheet to check the alignment, then print the real one at actual size, with "fit to page" switched off.
- Stick them in the same place every time. Pick a flat surface, away from seams, folds and curved edges.
- Scan a few before you do the rest. A phone camera is enough for this.
Mistakes that cost people a day
Using one code for two things is the most common. If the 500g and the 1kg sugar share a code, the barcode can't tell them apart, and telling them apart was the whole point of having one. So, before you start encoding your products, it helps to plan and go through your data to ensure that there are no clashes.
Printing too small is next. A tiny label looks tidy and then refuses to scan. If the bars on your label look like a thin comb, make the label bigger or the code shorter.
Shiny or curved surfaces cause trouble too. Glare off a glossy label, or a barcode wrapped round a bottle, will make a scanner struggle. Put the sticker on a flat patch, such as the bottom of the bottle, or on a tag.
And changing your coding scheme halfway through leaves you with old stock under one system and new stock under another. Decide how codes look before you print the first sheet, and then leave it alone.
Do you need a scanner?
Not at the start. Your phone's camera reads barcodes perfectly well, and it's the cheapest way to find out whether you like working this way. A dedicated scanner starts to make sense at a busy counter, where a second saved on every sale adds up over a day.
The Easy Ventory App has a built-in scanner, so you can find a product by pointing your camera at its label. It works offline, and your product list stays on your phone.
Where we'd start
If we were running a shop with a hundred and fifty products tomorrow, we'd label the top twenty on a Saturday, use them for a month, and only then decide about the rest. Most of the benefit comes from the handful of products that go through the till all day. The long tail can wait, and some of it may never be worth the sticker.
Final thoughts
Barcodes are a means to an end. What you want is to know what you have and to ring up the right thing quickly, and you can get a long way toward that with a notebook and a weekly count.
When the notebook starts to slow you down, labels are a sensible next step, and they cost almost nothing (except your time and printing costs). Do a few, see how it feels, and let the shop tell you whether to carry on.
Key takeaways
- A barcode is a name tag for a product. The price and the stock count live in your records.
- Small shops with a few dozen distinct products can often skip barcodes.
- They pay off with many products, lookalike items, several staff or slow stocktakes.
- Packaged goods already have a barcode. Scan it instead of making a new one.
- Start with your top twenty products, test on plain paper, and print at actual size.
