Why Should Your Business Immediately Adopt A Barcode Inventory System

A layman likely never gives a second thought to the black & white zebra lines and numbers on the labels of virtually all the goods we ever buy. We are of course speaking of the modest barcode, a piece of modern numerical wizard that allows computer to tell the difference between an orange and a tangerine.

Well, we all know that any technology or invention has a great history and a problem behind it, to which it is the solution. So what could be the PROBLEM behind the SOLUTION i.e. the now ubiquitous barcode system?

Barcode is a really simple idea: give every item that you want to classify its own, unique number and then simply print the number on the item so an electronic scanning device can read it. Visually, a barcode is a small image of lines (bars) and spaces that is affixed to retail store items, identification cards, and postal mail to identify a particular product number, person, or location.

A barcode system has three main parts:
• First – a central system run database to keep a tally of all the products you’re selling, it’s purchase origin, costs, and in-stock quantity etc
• Second – the barcodes printed on all the products
• Finally – one or more checkout scanners to read the barcodes

There are generally two kinds of barcodes: 1-dimensional (1D) barcodes & 2-dimensional (2D) barcodes.

• For many years, 1D barcodes were the standard, and are still in widespread use today despite their smaller capacity for information (they can only contain about 20-25 characters, though stacking of the characters can help increase that number).
• 2D barcodes store information both horizontally & vertically, resulting in exponentially larger storage capacity; however, an image scanner is required to read 2D barcodes, while a simple barcode scanner can only handle linear codes. There are more than a dozen barcode variations, however, depending on the application.

Reading the above brief, you would have got an idea as to why and how barcodes can be imperative in inventory management. What business does not have inventory (physical or virtual) to be managed at different stages? Well, more than the size of inventory, its accuracy of inventory that matters. A barcode inventory system can help you radically increase your efficiency in many a simple yet significant ways, saving you a great deal of time and money.

A typically good barcode inventory system can help you in following aspects of your business:

• Print and scan barcodes at various stages in the inventory chain
• Ship, receive, and perform inventory count
• Order management
• Track inventory or its parts across multiple locations
• Integrate with your accounting system

Each business whether big or small, goes through phases of birth, growth, maturity and stagnancy if it does not innovate. In all of the above listed stages, one of the major problem that most businesses face is keeping a track of inventory without losing it and finding it exactly when needed. No matter whatever you are selling groceries to fashion clothing, machinery or automobile accessories everywhere it is needed to keep track of every single piece of inventory, which has been bought by your own hard earned money.

This is where a barcode inventory system comes to your rescue. The system adds barcodes i.e. a unique number to each and every piece of inventory. You can drill it down from SKU code to Sizes to pieces within sizes and each single piece would have a unique number coded and attached to the piece. The system keeps a track of where the inventory has been stored and when it was last utilized.

This Barcode system will help you in various ways to ease your inventory management task:

• Speed – Barcodes were developed mainly to improve the speed of sales transaction – before, on and after the point of sale
• Greater accuracy – Relying on a barcode to process data is far more accurate than relying on manual data, which is highly prone to errors.
• Real-time data – Because of the processing speed, information about inventory levels or sales is available in real time.
• Minimal training required – Thanks to the simplicity of the barcode scanner, employees need little training to understand. Additional thanks to barcodes, there is even little for employees to learn and retain or remember.
• Improved inventory control – Being able to scan and track inventory yields a much more accurate count, as well as a better calculation of inventory turn. Businesses can hence optimize stock levels and avoid over-stocking or under-stocking.
• Low cost – Generating barcodes is quick and easy, as is installing a barcode system. Potential savings can be realized almost immediately.

The barcode systems are now being used in multitude of industries; including travel, medicine, manufacturing, entertainment, law, and various other enterprises. Barcodes and dedicated barcode scanners are now an integral part of any high-functioning business for taking efficiency and asset management to the next high level.

Well, a new code system has been recently developed and it is cited to be far more efficient than BARCODE. See in the image below.

Image Source: https://goo.gl/Pc52e2

It is called as BRO-CODE, and also known as BARK-CODE