EAN-13 Barcodes

26.10.2022

When is a barcode more than just a unique number?

When you need to be GS-1 compliant for your customers, you need to assign EAN-13 barcodes to your products which incorporate your Global Company Prefix (GCP). Certainly, this can be made into something as complicated as you want but on a high level, it’s less complex than one may think.

In short, when selling products to companies that resell your product, they often require you to ensure that the barcode is globally unique to your product. pokies that use payid This can be done by ensuring you stick to the GS-1 standards which is important for your customers so they don’t need to apply their own barcode stickers to the products you supply.

Most commonly this is done by booking a Global Company Prefix (GCP) with the GS-1 organisation in your country. GCP is essentially a unique number which has been assigned to your company (maybe you need several as it can have many uses) which will incorporate to create your product’s unique barcode IDs, under the specific format called “EAN-13” which is covered by GS-1 guidelines. Each product has a unique barcode and if a product changes it may also need to get a new barcode. 

How can Herbst help with EAN-13 barcoding?

Herbst Software as an ERP business management solution, provides an inbuilt wizard to select and generate new EAN13 barcodes to products. A product may have several different barcodes but should always only have one main EAN-13 barcode which also contains the   GCP (yes there can be exceptions but generally speaking, not).  

FAQ: ‘A SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) is a product-code, not a barcode.  When you generate a barcode with this standard you need not overwrite your other barcodes on that product but you can if you wish’. (Hudson, 2022)

“The EAN 13 symbol is the most commonly used of all the GS1 symbols. It is the symbol typically found on most items sold at a retail point of sale. EAN-13 is used to print each of the 13 digit GTIN types, namely for fixed weight products, variable weight products, coupons, books, serial publications etc. The GTIN may start with any of the following prefixes: 539, 20, 02, 981, 982, 977, 978 or with the Global Company Prefix (GCP) allocated to your company for barcoding purposes.” (Malone, f. 2020)   

EAN-13 Visual Specifications

• Min. size: 29.83 mm x 18.28 mm
• Max. size: 74.58 mm x 45.7 mm
• Nominal dimensions: 37.29 mm x 27.85 mm
• X dimension at nominal size: 0.330 mm
• Magnification factor: 80% to 200% from nominal dimension.
• Light Margin: Left 3.63 mm, Right 2.31mm 
• Min Bar Height: 22.85 mm at nominal size
• Target Location: Rear lower right quadrant

The X dimension or module width is the width of the narrowest bar or space at 100% magnification. The width of the other bars or spaces is two, three or four times the X dimension.

The magnification factor is the size by which the bar code symbol can be varied from the nominal dimension “. (GSI Ireland, 2022)

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