In Retail POS, you can add multiple barcodes that can be scanned alongside the SKU (Stock Keeping Unit). These can be captured on standard and variant products and used to scan and sell products and manage inventory.

Supported barcode types:

• SKU: Automatically generated SKUs.
• Custom: Any code used to identify your products.
• EAN: European Article Number.
• ISBN: International Standard Book Number.
• ITF: Interleaved Two of Five.
• UPC: Universal Product Code.
• JAN: Japanese Article Number.

Learn more about supported barcode types in Understanding product codes.

Understanding how multiple barcodes work

A product SKU is typically the primary product code used for selling, inventory management, and customer-facing material like receipts and labels.

Products often have multiple codes used externally. For example, a book may have a UPC, EAN, ISBN, and SKU.

Retail POS allows you to capture all of these codes and scan them to:

• Receive stock
• Add or edit promotions
• Add products to the Sell screen
• Adding product quick keys
• Add products to a stock order (not supported via CSV import)

The first code captured in Retail POS, either an existing SKU or custom code, forms the primary front-of-house code found on receipts, labels, and other areas in Retail POS. The secondary codes are only visible on Product pages. All codes will be scannable.

Additional codes are for internal use only. They can be imported in bulk by CSV file, but can't be exported once they're imported. You can edit them on the Edit product page.

Adding and editing multiple barcodes on standard products

1. Navigate to Catalog > Products.
2. Click Add product to create a new standard product, or locate an existing product and click the pencil icon (Edit) to edit.

3. Under Inventory, enter or scan the barcode into the SKU code box.

   

   When manually adding existing product codes to Retail POS, make sure to include the numbers exactly as written, including leading zeroes. If the barcode number is 0001231245 and you enter 1231245 and then try to scan the product, the matching item won’t be found. If your barcodes aren't scanning correctly, make sure your Retail POS product codes contain the right amount of numbers and only supported characters for that code type.

4. To add more codes, click Add another code.

   

5. Repeat until all codes are captured.
6. Click Save.

Adding and editing multiple barcodes on variant products

1. Navigate to Catalog > Products.
2. Click Add product to create a new product with variants, or locate an existing product and click the pencil icon (Edit) to edit.
3. In the Variants section, click the variant name to expand the row.

4. Enter or scan the barcode into the SKU code field.

   

5. To add more codes, click Add another code.

   

6. Repeat until all codes are added or edited.
7. Click Save.

Importing multiple barcodes in bulk via spreadsheet

Retail POS supports bulk importing products and barcodes via spreadsheet. You can't export or edit secondary barcodes via spreadsheet. Once imported, product codes will need to be edited individually on the Product page.

In spreadsheet files, you must format product code cells as plain text, even if they contain only numbers. In Google Sheets, click Format > Number > Plain text. This helps avoid issues like leading zeroes getting erased (ex. 0001231245).

To import barcodes in bulk via spreadsheet:

1. Navigate to Catalog > Products.
2. (Optional) Search to filter your product list.

3. Click Export list.

   

4. Open the file in Google Sheets or Excel.
5. Delete all of the inventory columns (including headers) to prevent unwanted changes to inventory levels when re-importing.

6. Add columns for each of the barcode types you want to add to your products:

   • sku_code_upc
   • sku_code_isbn
   • sku_code_ean
   • sku_code_itf
   • sku_code_jan
   • sku_code_custom

   

7. Populate the cells with the relevant barcodes. Each product can have none, one, or more of each barcode type. If the cell is left blank, the barcode type will be ignored for that product during import.
8. Save your spreadsheet.

9. Navigate back to the Products page and click Import.

   

10. Click Choose a File to Upload... and select your spreadsheet file. The spreadsheet validator will read all columns and match them with the corresponding data fields in Retail POS.

    

    If the validator detects any errors you will be taken to the column matching screen. Here you'll be able to view any unmatched columns and fix them by selecting the correct column from the dropdown menu or clicking Don't import to ignore the column.

    

11. When the unmatched columns have been matched or ignored, click Continue.

    

12. If no errors are identified, click Continue with import. Once the import is complete, you'll receive a notification stating "Your product import has completed. # records were added, # records were updated and # were ignored."

    If any records were ignored, click View ignored products (CSV) to determine what needs to be corrected.

    Your import will be successful if no records were ignored. You can now see the imported barcodes for each individual product on the Edit product page.

    

Product codes will need to be edited individually on the Products page. To edit multiple product codes in bulk after importing, prepare your spreadsheet and submit a request to the Retail Imports team.

Using barcodes with embedded weight or price

If you package and sell your own bulk goods, you can scan or type in barcodes embedded with price or weight into the Sell screen, so the price or weight automatically populates in Retail POS. Retail POS supports UPC-A and EAN 13 barcodes.

Scanning isn't compatible with scales at the point of sale. You can only scan pre-weighed items and labels.

If you use integrations like WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and Shopify, weight and dimension product information doesn't sync to your products, and you won't have access to the weight and dimension feature on the Edit Product page.

Understanding embedded bar codes

Embedded barcodes start with "2", where the last few digits can be the price or weight of the item. They usually follow this format: YYCCCCCPPPPPX.

• YY must be 20, 02, or just 2.
• CCCCC is the SKU.
• PPPPP is the data (price or weight).
  • Price is divided by 100, for example 02000 becomes 20.00.
  • Weight is divided by 1000, for example 02000 becomes 2.000 quantity.
• X is the check digit, and must be valid according to EAN or UPC specification. This is generated and added by printing scales automatically.

Enabling embedded weight or price

If you aren't using embedded barcodes, you can leave the barcode settings on Only allow SKUs. If you enable embedded barcodes and have SKUs with leading zeros, the SKUs won't be scannable the Retail POS iPad app.

1. Navigate to Setup > General.
2. Under Barcode and SKU settings, click the Embedded barcodes dropdown.

3. Select Allow barcodes with embedded weight/price. If you aren't using embedded barcodes, select Only allow SKUs.

   

Retail POS can't update the price in the scale system, but you can build an integration using the Retail POS API to update your scales when you change prices in Retail POS. The Sell screen barcodes settings can't be set for individual products.

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