Barcode Advice

[Mike Lesser]

Hi all. I'm starting a small retail bakery business, and I have a POS that allows me to product numbers as barcodes. I'd like to use a scanner to simplify checkout, like at any store. I don't have any requirements for age of the item, or anything like that; it's just to identify what the item is. I expect to have about 300 items in total.

My question is, should I have simple codes that are essentially integers starting from 1? I was thinking of having almost-human-readable codes, but now I think that's kind of pointless. Also some articles have claimed that short barcodes have less scanning errors. To illustrate, should I have:

CROISSANTALMONDLARGE
CROISSANTALMONDSMALL

or else

CROISS001
CROISS002

Thanks.

[Freelancier]

Depending on the barcode, it could have a checksum to eliminate errors. Also, some barcode formats are pretty wide, so having long names on them will create a problem with fitting into the barcode label space.

If you think your customers would care, put a 3-D barcode on your items that takes them to your web site to get the ingredients in an item (for example). It's a way to further engage your customers and maybe offer them services that the retail operation doesn't highlight (like catering).

For the check-out barcode, just do whatever is easiest to work within the limitations of the POS and your scanner.