We meticulously plan out our grocery lists and spend time analyzing the ingredients of our food to determine if it’s good for us. Kids spend a ton of time reading the back of the box when they’re eating their morning cereal. With all reading we do when it comes to our food of consumer goods purchases, we spend little time analyzing the barcodes.

Interested in learning how to read a barcode? You’ve come to the right place! Read on to learn all about it.

How Do Barcodes Work?

Barcodes are a series of black and white lines of varying widths that are read by a scanner at checkout. Beneath the lines are a series of numbers that pull up information about the item in case the cashier needs to put the item into the register manually.

They might not look like much, but barcodes actually contain a great deal of information about the item upon which they are placed. Scanners read the bar pattern and then they translate the bars into text that tells the scanner information about the product manufacturer, the price of the item, and the number of that particular item left in inventory.

What Do the Numbers Mean?

The numbers on a barcode have a technical name: Global Trade Item Number (GTIN). This number is assigned by GS1 according to their standards. The first six numbers of the barcode are unique to your business on an international scale.

The following five numbers are unique to the product being sold. The final number is a check digit that serves as quality control in terms of the GTIN being correct.

Therefore, the only information you can get from the numbers on a barcode is who manufactured the product and what the product is. If you need more information, you will need a scanner or a computer system.

Get a Scanner

You can’t look at the lines on a barcode and automatically know what the lines represent. That’s why numbers were added, so you would have a manual way of reading a barcode.

Reading barcodes manually isn’t the best way to utilize barcode technology. If you want to optimize your ability to read to barcodes, you need to get a scanner like a c# read pdf scanner. There are many ways to use tech to read a barcode and give you full access to all the info stored between the lines!

Loved Learning How to Read a Barcode?

Learning how to read a barcode is as simple as reading the numbers beneath the lines. Though our eyes can’t process the information stored in the lines, all we need is a smartphone to gather all the information we need about the item. If you’re a business owner, then being able to create and read your own barcodes will help make your business much more efficient!

Are you interested in learning more about the latest technology for your business? We’ve got you covered. Check out the rest of our blog for everything you need to know!

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