Summary
Weighing scales are used extensively in grocery stores and confectionery shops. Most of the items in these businesses need to be weighed for calculating their final price. Since each of these items needs to be weighed for billing, this leads to longer queues and unhappy customers.
To avoid these long billing hours and make the billing seamless, weighing scale barcode generators can be employed. Using this machine, you can generate barcodes for items based on their weights, which can later be used to add these items to the cart effortlessly. These barcodes can also help you sell items by repacking them into different quantities based on weight.
Assume you want to clear the inventory of a weighable item. You now have 15 kg of this item left, so you opt to divide it into five different packs. You can use the weighing scale barcode generator to generate barcodes for these five packs and paste them into them. You may now sell these packs as five individual items, allowing your customer to select them based on their needs.
Even though these items are sold as individual items, they are the same item packed differently based on weight. This information is embedded in the barcodes generated by the weighing scale. You must configure Zoho POS to read these embedded barcodes so that the items can be added to the cart seamlessly.
Prerequisite
You need to configure the weighing scale barcode generator to generate embedded barcodes for the items. This can be achieved by exporting weigh-able item details from Zoho POS and importing them into the machine.
To export weighable item details from Zoho POS, you need to create a custom view for weighable items and export the custom data.
Navigate to BusinessItems > Items View filter dropdown and select New Custom View.
Create a custom view with criteria based on unit usage and click Save.
In this new custom view, click more and select Export Current View.
Configure barcode
Once you set up your weighing scale barcode generator with the item details, you can generate embedded barcodes for all the items in Zoho POS based on their weight. To read these barcodes at the billing front, you need to configure Zoho POS with these embedded barcodes. To enable and configure embedded barcodes, you need to understand the following details:
| Field | Length | Additional info |
|---|---|---|
| Prefix | The number of characters that can appear in the barcode's prefix. | Value: The number of characters in the field must match the length specified. This value must be unique for it to distinguish it from other barcode profiles. For example, if the length is 4, the possible values are 1234, W123, WW12, and so on. |
| SKU | The number of characters that can appear in a barcode as the Item's SKU. | No additional info is required. |
| Weight | It is the maximum number of characters that can appear in a barcode as the item's weight. | Precision: The number of decimal rates applied to your item quantity. For example, if the length is 4 and the precision is 2, the weight will be like 0205, which equals 2.05 kg. (If the item unit is in Kg) |
| Amount | It is the maximum number of characters that can appear in a barcode as the item's price. | Precision: The number of decimal rates applied to your item price. For example, If the length is 5, and the precision is 2, the amount value will be like 12350, which equals 123.50 rupees. |
Sample embedded barcode:
The barcode W12123450200 encodes information for a product with SKU 12345, having a weight of 2 kg with a precision of 2 (indicating two decimal places). Note that the W12 in the barcode is a prefix and used to differentiate multiple barcode profiles if they exist.
Configure a new barcode
Navigate to Sales Channels > Preferences > Sales, click Enable embedded barcode in the Sales section.
In the New Configuration screen, provide a Name for this configuration with the other details and click Add.
Notes
The Prefix field is optional if you need only one configuration.
The prefix's starting value must be unique for all current configurations.
The weight precision value should match the one specified in the 'Set a decimal rate for your item quantity' preset in Item preferences.
Setup additional configurations
Click Manage next to Enable embedded barcode.
Click New+and provide the required details.
Other Actions
Edit Configuration
Zoho POS can read embedded barcodes using the existing configurations. If any modifications are made to the barcodes, the configuration should be updated accordingly.
Click Manage next to the Enable embedded barcode.
In the Embedded Barcode Configurations screen, click the drop-down next to your configuration and select Edit.
In the Edit Configuration screen, make any necessary changes and click Save.
Mark as Inactive
If you want Zoho POS to cease reading the embedded barcodes temporarily, disable the configuration associated with those barcodes.
Click Manage next to the Enable embedded barcode.
In the Embedded Barcode Configurations screen, click the drop-down next to your configuration and select Mark as Inactive.
Delete Configuration
If you want Zoho POS to stop reading embedded barcodes permanently, remove the configuration associated with those barcodes.
Click Manage next to the Enable embedded barcode.
In the Embedded Barcode Configurations screen, click the drop-down next to your configuration and select Delete.
In the following pop-up screen, select Delete again to complete the deletion.
