What Is RFID? How It Works & How It Compares to Barcodes
RFID stands for Radio Frequency Identification. It uses radio waves to read a tag attached to an item without needing line of sight, so hundreds of tags inside a sealed carton can be read at once. A system has three parts: tags, readers, and software that interprets the reads. That last part is the whole […]
What Is a SKU? Stock Keeping Unit Explained (+ Examples)
A SKU is the unique code your business gives to each distinct product you sell, so you can tell one item apart from another and track it through your system. It’s pronounced “skew” and stands for stock keeping unit. Every size, colour and variant gets its own code. So a small blue t-shirt and a […]
What Is a UPC? Universal Product Code Explained
A UPC is a Universal Product Code — a 12-digit number, printed as a barcode, that identifies a specific product worldwide. Every retailer scanning that code sees the same product, because the number is issued centrally and belongs to one item and one manufacturer. That universality is the whole point, and it is what separates […]
Barcode Scanning for Inventory: How It Works & How to Start
A barcode inventory system uses printed codes on products and storage locations, read by a scanner, to record stock movements automatically. Scanning replaces typing at the moment stock moves — which is where nearly all inventory errors originate — and the stock figure updates immediately rather than whenever somebody gets round to it. It is […]
What Is Cloud Inventory Management? Benefits & How It Works
Cloud inventory management means your stock system runs on a provider’s servers and is reached over the internet, rather than running on a machine in your own building. The provider handles servers, backups, security and upgrades, and you pay a subscription instead of buying hardware and licences outright. That is the entire technical difference. Everything […]
How to Track Inventory: Methods & a Step-by-Step Guide
Tracking inventory means keeping a record of what you hold, where it is, and what moves — accurately enough to sell from and buy against. In practice: give every product a code, give every storage place a labelled location, record each movement at the moment it happens, and count a rotating slice of it regularly […]
Types of Barcodes: A Complete Guide (1D & 2D)
There are dozens of barcode formats, and they divide into two families. 1D or linear barcodes — UPC, EAN, Code 128, ITF-14 — encode data along one axis and hold around 8 to 25 characters. 2D barcodes such as QR Code and Data Matrix use both axes and hold thousands. This guide covers the formats […]
What Is a Barcode? How Barcodes Work (Plain-English Guide)
A barcode is a machine-readable pattern of bars, spaces or shapes that encodes data about an item, almost always a number identifying it. A scanner reads the pattern, verifies it using a built-in check digit, and passes the number to a system, which looks up everything else about the product. The important thing to understand […]