COMPULINK 3300 Overland Avenue, Suite 201 § Los Angeles, California 90034 § 310 × 204 × 5121 

 

Barcoding With The Jewelry Shopkeeper

Note: The Jewelry Shopkeeper does not require barcoding — you can do point-of-sale and physical inventory using the standard dot-matrix printer tags. However, barcoding can greatly speed-up physical inventory and inventory transfers and can provide an extra degree of accuracy for point-of-sale.

To print jewelry price tags with barcodes on them, you need a specialized printer. You cannot use barcodes that are pre-printed by your manufacturer — if you want to use barcoding, you have to print the barcoded tags yourself.

Regular dot matrix, ink jet and laser printers are not suitable. A Zebra brand printer (not a thermal printer, but a thermal transfer printer) such as the S500. The S300 (Stripe 300) is the lowest price printer and can print perfectly good tags. The S500 (Stripe 500) is the next step up and has some advantages such as coming with a Parallel port version, which is easier to configure than the serial port of the S300. The parallel port feature alone is usually worthwhile since most users’ problems are related to the serial port connection. The S500 also prints faster and has more font options. The 105S model is more expensive because it is more heavy duty and more reliable. However, the Stripe series printers are considered durable enough for most jewelry stores. These printers will support a wide range of tags such as ring tags, earring tags, watch tags, gift tags and string tags.

Some of the other benefits of this type of printer are that you can re-arrange the layout of the tag, deciding what pieces of information you want to print and where. You can fit more information on a price tag with this type of printer than with a dot-matrix printer. The tags used are made of polyester and are very strong. The writing on the tags is resin melted onto the tag and can withstand without smearing most handling, ultrasonic and steam cleaning.

The Datamax DMX430 printer may be supported in future versions of the Jewelry Shopkeeper. The Barcode Blazer made by Cognitive Solutions has limited support, so we cannot recommend buying one, but if you have one already, it might work with the Jewelry Shopkeeper.

None of these printers can be used for anything other than printing tags.

To read barcodes, you need a CCD reader or a laser reader. The barcode reader has to be a good quality one that can read a high density barcode, because the barcode has to be printed very small to fit on the price tags. Generally the CCD readers are easier to operate, although the laser readers can work well if they are mounted on the cash drawer in a stand and activate when you put a barcode underneath. The barcode reader has to be connected to the computer using a barcode reader/keyboard wedge so that the barcodes that the reader decodes are sent into the keyboard port of the computer the same way keyboard strokes would be sent into the keyboard port. (The Jewelry Shopkeeper can’t tell and doens’t need to know if the stock numbers that are being read are being read in with a barcode reader or being typed-in by hand).

Most barcode readers can read various different types (symbologies) of barcode. The Jewelry Shopkeeper prints the barcode on the price tags with the Interleaved 2 of 5 (I 2of5) symbology, so it is important that the reader be configured to read I 2 of 5. Also, the stock numbers that the Jewelry Shopkeeper prints are all eight digits long. In order to prevent the barcode reader reading only a part of a stock number, it is a good idea to configure the reader to only indicate a valid ‘read’ if the full eight digits are scanned.

The barcode reader can be used to read barcodes at Point of Sale and also to take physical inventory.

To take physical inventory, you can either bring merchandise to the computer a tray at a time and scan the barcode at the computer or you hook a portable data collector to your belt and walk around the store scanning merchandise in place but the portable data collector is not required. If you have a portable data collector, you usually can temporarily disconnect the barcode reader from the computer and connect it to the portable data collector. Sometimes the portable data collector units have their own barcode reader built-in.

If you use the portable data collector, you have to be able to easily download it’s memory into an ASCII file on the computer. This is something that you will have to be able to do yourself — not using the Jewelry Shopkeeper. The ASCII file should contain a single column of stock numbers with one stock number per row. Some data collectors can download their memory into an ASCII file by plugging into the keyboard port while you have a text editor open. Other data collectors have to be connected to a serial port and you have to run a special program to download the memory to an ASCII file. Either way, the Jewelry Shopkeeper doesn’t know and doesn’t need to know how the ASCII file is created. An ASCII file can also be called a text file.

Approximate prices for the Zebra printers are $1300->$2500. If they are not easily available locally, Zebra printers and tags can be obtained through Kassoy (516) 942-8517.

CCD barcode readers are priced approximately in the $400 to $700 range including the ‘wedge’.

Portable data collectors are priced approximately in the range $400 to $1000. You can use more than one data collector if you want to speed up physical inventory by having more than one person scan barcodes simultaneously.

If you can’t locate a dealer for some of this equipment, call Kassoy at (516) 942-8517 or another supplier of barcode equipment.