Top 10 Reasons to Include Barcode Labels

Most business owners don’t realize it, but barcodes are very important. You shouldn’t wait several months or years to start using them. You should start using barcodes now to help your business. Here are the top 10 reasons why you need to use them as soon as you start your business.

Reason 1: Barcodes are Easy
Unlike many other tracking systems, barcodes are very easy to use and generate. You just need a special program that will make the barcodes for you, and you need a scanner to scan the barcodes. Anyone can do it, and they provide a lot of value compared to their ease of use.

Reason 2: Scalable
Scaling up your barcode needs is very easy. Barcodes pay attention to how many items are in your store, and they can track thousands of items at once. You can also add new barcodes for new items in seconds. It takes very little work to add to your list of barcodes.

Reason 3: Consistency
There are other systems and techniques that businesses can use to help sales, but most of them are temporary techniques that may not be around years or decades from now. Barcodes have been around for a very long time, and they are consistent. This means that you really won’t have to worry about changing over your systems unless you want faster software in the future.

Reason 4: Quick POS Work
Ringing up a sale without a barcode takes a lot of work. You need to write out an invoice, calculate change yourself and you need to enter a lot of information manually to finish the sale. It can take several minutes, but a barcode can take several seconds because you just scan it into the POS software to ring up the item.

Reason 5: Keep Up With Competition
Very few businesses don’t have barcodes, and customers expect them. Customers don’t care about how easy it is for you to track the items, but they do care about getting in and out of the store as quickly as possible, and they want their returns to go as smoothly as possible. Since barcodes can communicate directly with a POS system, you don’t have to write out paper invoices to do a sale.

Reason 6: Less Theft
If you don’t have a good tracking system, then how do you know if someone stole an item from you? It’s difficult to go by inventory records because manual inventory records are typically inaccurate. You won’t have sophisticated sales records, so it can be virtually impossible to tell unless someone stole a large number of items. However, a barcode will track the number of items you should have, and you can easily find if theft occurred. You can also fix the cause of that theft.

Reason 7: Less Overhead Expenses
Most businesses attribute unnecessary overhead expenses to improper ordering. For example, you think you don’t have enough items to stock the store, so you go ahead and order a shipment. However, the truth is that you have more than enough inventory in your warehouse, so you are stuck with the extra shipment. Barcodes will track your inventory, and this system can tell you when you really need to order more items.

Reason 8: Save on Time
Barcodes cost pennies to use, and they save a lot of time. For example, it takes hours to write out manual invoices, count inventory and track items without a barcode system. You could save hundreds or thousands by putting those hours to better use.

Reason 9: Waiting is Harder
Barcodes are easy to use, but the longer you wait the harder it will be to use a barcode system. You need to transition all of your employees over to a barcode system, and you need to get used to working with the software. However, if you use barcodes when you start, then there is no transition time, and you immediately gain experience with this system.

Reason 10: Quickly Change Prices
Most stores have discounted items to bring in more customers, and making these discounts is easy when you use barcodes. You just change the POS software, and the discount is made. This ensures there is price consistency, and it’s very easy to do.

Alex Hudson is a technical advocate writing on a variety of topics including: Camcode asset ID labels, product reviews, and business decisions.