Wasp Barcode Inventory Control - Manual (Page 24)

InventoryControl Printable Help
Chapter 2 - Introductory Materials
2.1 Barcode Best Practices
In InventoryControl, when you are asked for a number to identify sites, customers, items, locations etc.,
you should always use a short sequential set of numbers or numbers and characters. Enter the full text
description of the site or location in the description field, not the number field. These numbers can then
be printed as a barcode and used to scan locations into mobile devices. You should estimate the largest
number of sites or locations you will have and pick a range of numbers that are reserved for each. For
instance, if you have up to 60 sites, you should reserve 100 to 199 for your sites. Each new site you
enter will get a number from this range. If you want to more closely tie the number to the site, add a one
or two letter designation to the end of the site number.
For example, use 100US to designate the main US warehouse and 101UK for the warehouse in the
United Kingdom. If you expect to have a few hundred suppliers, reserve 1000 to 2000 for suppliers.
Manufacturers can have 500 to 599. Items should start at 20000. This range reservation serves two
purposes. First, it allows those who know the ranges to easily distinguish a designation for the
warehouse from the designation for an item if all they see is a barcode on a paper or a box. Second,
reserving a range of numbers makes the process of deciding what number to use for new designations
much easier. If you add a manufacturer and you already used 512, the next is 513. For example, if a
stray box is presented to the warehouse manager and she sees barcodes with 100US C050100, she
knows this box was stocked in the US warehouse on row C shelf 05 bin 01.00. The box may also have a
barcode with 20104 which she knows is the item number and can be used to put the item back into
inventory. Without these barcodes, the box might have to be opened to identify the item and then
someone would have to track where it came from and where to put it away.
Another thing to consider when creating your numeric representation for locations and items is that some
devices only support a reduced set of characters. Some mobile devices, such as the WDT2200, do not
have a keyboard that can support lower case letters or the entire range of special characters. With these
devices, if your item number is 10000(1) you will not be able to type the item number or scan in the
number from a barcode because the parentheses character is not supported. All o
Our internal barcode labels use Code 128 which supports both lower and upper case characters, all
numbers and many special characters.
InventoryControl uses the symbology called Code 128 for all the pre-built labels. All the scanners and
mobile devices Wasp supplies can read Code 128. Best practices suggest you use Code 128 because it
supports all numbers, upper and lower case characters and most special characters. It also reduces the
size of most common barcodes.
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