SalevaBarcode scanning for a small shop: what to scan, what to skip
Scanning speeds up a counter only if your catalogue is set up for it. What to barcode first, what to leave alone, and how to handle loose goods and products with no code.
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Barcodes are not the point. Speed at the counter is the point, and scanning is one way to get it.
For some shops it is transformative: a grocery with three hundred packaged lines and a queue at seven in the evening. For others it is a waste of setup time: a tailor, a vegetable stall, a shop where most of what sells has no code on it at all.
This is how to tell which you are, and how to set up a catalogue that makes scanning actually faster rather than a second thing to manage.
First, does scanning suit what you sell?
Scanning earns its place when most of your sales are packaged goods with printed barcodes, sold one unit at a time, at a counter busy enough that seconds matter.
Work through your own shelves:
| What you sell | Scanning |
|---|---|
| Packaged groceries, drinks, snacks, toiletries | Strong fit, most of the benefit is here |
| Medicines | Strong fit, and the batch and expiry discipline matters more |
| Mobile phones, electronics, accessories | Good fit, plus serial numbers for warranty |
| Clothing, shoes | Only if you or the brand tag with codes |
| Loose grain, vegetables, sweets, meat | Poor fit, sell by weight instead |
| Services, repairs, tailoring | Not applicable |
| Bakery made on site | Usually not worth it |
Most shops are a mixture. The answer is not "scan everything" or "scan nothing", it is scan the packaged lines and use a fast product search for the rest. A good till lets you do both in the same sale without switching modes.
You probably do not need a scanner gun
A phone camera reads a printed barcode in a fraction of a second, which is fast enough for a small counter. That is worth knowing before spending on hardware.
A dedicated scanner starts to pay for itself when:
- Your counter is busy enough that hundreds of items pass through per day.
- Someone other than the owner is on the till and needs a tool that does one thing.
- You do stock counts regularly and want both hands free.
Until then, the camera in the phone you already use is the cheaper and perfectly workable option. Saleva scans with the phone camera and also accepts input from a Bluetooth scanner if you add one later, because such scanners simply type the code.
Set the catalogue up once, properly
This is where scanning succeeds or fails. The scan is instant; what it finds is what matters.
Put the barcode on the product record, not in the name. The code is a key for looking up, not part of what the product is called.
Keep one barcode per product and one product per barcode. A 500 ml bottle and a 1.5 litre bottle are two products with two codes, not one product you correct at the counter.
Scan the code, do not type it. Manually entering thirteen digits is slow and error-prone, and a single wrong digit creates a product that will never be found again by scanning.
Add codes as products pass through, not in one marathon session. The realistic way to barcode a shop is to let the till create the link during normal trading: when you scan something unknown, it offers to create it there and then. After a few weeks your fast-moving lines are all covered, which is where almost all the benefit lies.
Do not try to barcode your entire catalogue before you start. The twenty per cent of products that generate most of your sales will be scanned dozens of times a week; the long tail may be scanned twice a year.
What to do about products with no barcode
Every shop has them: loose goods, local brands, imported items with an unreadable code, things you make yourself.
You have three sensible options.
Sell by name. A quick search on a well-named product is nearly as fast as a scan. For a shop with a few dozen unbarcoded lines this is all you need.
Sell by weight. Loose goods should be priced per kilo and billed by weight rather than pretending to be units. Trying to barcode loose rice creates fiction in your stock numbers.
Print your own labels. Worth it when you have many unbarcoded items that sell as units — a clothing shop with its own stock, say, or a bakery selling packed items. Generate a code, print a small label, stick it on. Saleva can produce printable barcode labels with the name and price from your product list.
Printing your own codes has a second benefit: your label can carry the price, which cuts down "how much is this?" at the counter.
Scanning for stock work, not just selling
The counter is the obvious use. The quieter one is stock control.
- Receiving a delivery. Scan each line as you unpack it rather than matching the bill by eye. Discrepancies surface while the delivery person is still there.
- Stock counts. Scanning a shelf is much faster than reading names off a list, and much less error-prone.
- Checking a price. A customer asks; you scan; you answer. No hunting.
If your till supports a continuous scanning mode, use it for these jobs: it keeps reading one code after another without a tap between, which is the difference between a five-minute shelf and a twenty-minute one. Saleva has this mode on the selling screen for large baskets and it works the same way when counting.
The mistakes that make scanning slower than typing
Duplicate products. The same item entered twice, once with a barcode and once without, so half your sales go to a product with no stock tracking. Search for a new product's name before creating it.
Scanning the wrong code on multipacks. A box of twelve carries its own code, and so does each bottle inside. Decide which one you sell and use that. If you sell both, they are two products.
Barcodes on the record that were typed by hand. One transposed digit and the scan never matches. If a scan is not finding a product you know exists, check the stored code before blaming the camera.
Letting the camera be the only way in. A scratched, creased or reflective code will sometimes refuse to read. The counter must never be stuck: make sure you can always find the product by name in a couple of taps.
A realistic first week
- Day one. Pick your twenty fastest-moving packaged products. Scan each into its product record. Twenty minutes, done once.
- Rest of week one. Sell as normal, scanning where you can. When a scan finds nothing, create the product on the spot.
- End of week one. Look at what is still being searched by name. If those are frequent sellers, add their codes.
- Week two. Try scanning one delivery as it arrives, and one shelf during a stock count. Decide whether a dedicated scanner would pay for itself.
Nothing about that week requires closing the shop or a training day, which is exactly why it works.
Questions shopkeepers ask
Do I have to buy barcodes for my own products?
Only if you sell them through other retailers, which requires registered codes from a body such as GS1. For your own shop's internal use, codes you generate yourself are fine.
Can two products have the same barcode?
They should not. If a supplier ships two different items under one code, treat one of them as an unbarcoded product and sell it by name, or print your own label for it.
Will scanning work in poor light?
Phone cameras need some light to focus. If your counter is dim, a small lamp does more for scanning speed than any software setting.
Is a scan enough to track expiry dates?
No. A barcode identifies the product, not the batch. If expiry matters, record batches with their dates separately and sell the oldest first. More on that here.
What if I already have thousands of products entered without codes?
Leave them. Add codes to products as they sell, starting with the fastest movers. Within a month the lines that matter will be covered without a single evening of data entry.
Try this in Saleva
Saleva is a free Android point-of-sale app for small shops: selling, stock, customer dues, staff and an online shop page. Selling works with no internet at all.