Role of Barcode in WooCommerce Point of Sale System

A Barcode (also bar code) is an optical, machine-readable, representation of data; the data usually describes something about the object that carries the barcode.

Traditional barcodes systematically represented data by varying the widths and spacings of parallel lines and may be referred to as linear or one-dimensional (1D). Later, two-dimensional (2D) variants were developed, using rectangles, dots, hexagons and other geometric patterns, called matrix codes or 2D barcodes, although they do not use bars as such.

A Barcode has significant importance in the POS system. Some of its benefits are as follows :

Error Prevention

The occurrence of errors for manually entered data is slightly higher than that of barcodes. A barcode scan is fast and reliable and takes a very less time than entering data manually.

Reduce checkout time

Using barcode system a POS agent can quickly identify the products. And it takes a very less amount of time to complete the checkout process as compared to manual entry of products.

Inventory control

Using a barcode a unique identity will be provided to a product. It reduces the mixing of the products. A product can be uniquely identified and placed in the right place. In a typical retail store, the barcodes are used for the identification of right place as well.

Improves customer satisfaction

Barcode eliminates the human error and reduces the checkout time, hence every time a customer gets a right product which he picked. It fastens the checkout process which leads to lower the cart abundancy that is often in the online purchase.

Barcodes are cost-effective to design and print

The cost of the printing is very less as compared to the benefits is having. A large number of barcodes can be easily printed at a very low cost.

Reduce the training time

Earlier, the time consumed on the training of a POS agent is very high. It takes only minutes to master the hand-held scanner for reading barcodes. In a very short span of time a POS agent can be trained for the effective work with very reduced human errors.

Large Inventory Tracking

It is very difficult to maintain a large number of inventories. Companies that maintain inventories in the hundreds of thousands, or even millions, would have to scale back. Barcodes to accurately track large stocks and also look up any single piece of article in a matter of seconds.

Reduced Inventory Costs 

Immediate access to inventory information on a real-time basis can be used to reduce inventory levels. This will reduce costs for a company in a number of ways, including interest, labor for handling excess inventory, and facility overhead.

Barcodes can be generated for products under “WooCommerce Point of Sale > POS Products”. Here the admin can select the desired products for which he wants to generate the barcode and select “Generate Barcode” and hit “Apply”.

Barcodes can be easily printed for a product by pressing “Print Barcode” for every product.

By pressing “Print Barcode” a popup will be available as below image to enter the number of quantity to pint the barcodes:

Using a barcode reader, which is an electronic input device, the sales agent scans the barcode present on the product. After scanning the product’s barcode the product will be added to the cart.

It is a very accurate method to add the products to the cart in a very less time as compared to the manual entry of products.