Inventory tracking is very important for running a successful business. A good tracking system can help your business run efficiently while at the same time saving you time and money.
What is the first step to starting inventory tracking?
It is the SKU. The product SKU comes first when planning an inventory tracking system.
Good plans and rules for SKU are crucial to the next things related to your inventory business. If you have good plans and rules, then your business will go well and run smoothly.
What features do good SKU numbers have?
SKU stands for stock keeping unit, and it is a unique set of letters and numbers.
It can help you track and locate products in your company warehouse while integrated with some inventory management system.
There are many posts talking about SKU, but to make concise, Good SKU numbers at least have the following features:
- Easy to understand.
- Words based on importance
- No special characters
- No letters that are easily confused with numbers.
- No zero start
- No manufacturer’s numbers or parts
- Simple and short.
If you are not ready and still confused with basic SKU concepts, you can read the posts of SKU help and the SKU Number Generator.
Inventory SKU and Barcodes
Barcode is a visualization of serial letters and numbers. For inventory tracking, a barcode is the visualized data of an item’s SKU.
The purpose of using barcodes is to improve work efficiency and decrease the errors when searching for and recording inventory stock movement. Statistics show manual entries are 10 times more prone to errors than using barcode systems.
Barcode Generation
There are two types of barcodes, and they are divided into 1D and 2D classes. They are used in different applications and scenarios.
![](https://www.mxsku.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/barcode-1186578-640x480-1.jpg)
The difference is quite big between 1D and 2D barcodes. Although at first glance it seems like only a one-digit difference, the meaning and data encoded behind it are very different.
For inventory tracking, one-dimension barcodes are the most widely used ones.
They are also what many of us think when talking about barcodes.
1D barcodes are made of vertical black lines and spaces that are stretched out horizontally. A barcode scanner can identify a specific product number by scanning the barcode label and then query through an inventory management system and easily find the product information that corresponds to that SKU contained in the 1D barcode. So they are very useful and simple to track of business inventory items.
Two-dimensional barcodes contain much more information than 1D barcodes. The data encoded into a 2D barcode includes images, voices, text, and other types of binary data. 2D barcodes store large amounts of information with less space.
To create a barcode for your inventory item, you at least should have one barcode generation software. There is a variety of barcode software available to satisfy this need. But if you want a one-solution for all, I mean inventory management, you can check our offline invenvory solution, it’s free now. Our product supports 1D and 2D barcode creation, You configure the label type, color, and dimension.
Please watch this YouTube video if you want to know how it works to generate a barcode using our inventory product.
Barcode scanner
Obviously, a barcode scanner is required to get work done.
It’s meaningless if you do not have a barcode scanner. There are wired or wireless scanner available in the market, just pick the right one for your business.
Practice Tips
The software you used is the core of inventory management. The inventory management software enhances the experience and boosts work efficiency. Tracking inventory with a barcode must be seamlessly integrated with a professional inventory software to identify the inventory status and then help you make a wise and accurate business decision.
Conclusion
From the above we discussed, it’s quite clear that implementing an inventory management system takes less effort but provides huge advantages, and a barcode system is one important chain of inventory tracking for any business.
Planning ahead before suffering is always right, and it also helps you avoid potential business loss. If you need a business solution with a lower cost, please contact us or send us a message. We will guarantee you a quick response and a satisfactory inventory management solution, online or offline.