Some products like Fruit & Vegetables, Butchers, Fish, etc sold in the shop do not have any barcodes. Here is a guideline to setup the barcode system for these items. Once set up, please keep these codes in record and make sure that it’s unique in the shop.
Item Types with Internal Barcode
- Fixed measure trade item – An item always produced in the same pre-defined version (e.g., type, size, weight, contents, design) that may be sold at any point in the supply chain.
- Loose produce trade items – Are fruits and vegetables which are delivered to the store loose, in boxes or cases, and then put into a bag or selected individually by the customer for purchase.
- Variable measure trade item – A trade item which may be traded without a predefined measure, such as its weight or leng
RCN & Terms
Restricted Circulation Numbers can be used to identify variable measure units for Point-of-Sale (POS) but are subject to national GS1 specifications. Normally 13digit EAU begins with 20~29 or 02.
PLU (Price Look Up): An IFPS PLU number on the label in human readable text used to identify the consumer unit.
GTIN-13 (EAN-13 Symbol): Barcode define by GS1, used for POS, identification of pre-packed fixed weight/count, trade item
RCN for Fixed Measure Trade Item
Internal barcode (RCN) can be used for pre-packed product or some product without barcode from vendors. Suggest to use 02 Prefix code for this segment as below:
| GS1 Prefix (2) | Business Unit (2) | Department (3) | Item number (5) | Check Digit (1) |
| 0 2 | BB | DDD | IIIII | V |
Make sure that this code is unique in the company and well planned at the very beeginning. The code will be used in the whole shop and they can’t be used outside of the company.
Business Unit: Majoy business department.
Department: Business department: own department can define item numbers internally.
Item Number: Suggest to use it sequentially avoiding duplication.
Check Digit: You can use online tools to calculate the check digit here: https://www.gs1.org/services/check-digit-calculator
Variable Measure Trade Items scanned at retail POS using RCN
Restricted circulation variable measure trade items are those sold in random quantities against a fixed price per unit quantity and intended to cross a point-of-sale (e.g., apples sold at a fixed price per kilogram).
RCN with Item Price
In Taptouch system, we suggest to use GS1 prefix 21 in RCN for product with price information. Format as below
| GS1 Prefix (2) | Department | Item (3) | Price (5) | Check Digit (1) |
| 2 1 | DD | III | PPPPP | V |
For easy management and remember, normally, we can use Department numbers with 3 digit PLU (Item) as SKU number. For example, fruit BU is 10, Apple PLU is 001. And 她和price of one bag apples is 10.98, then the RCN barcode number will be: 21 10 001 01098 9. Check digit 9 can be calculated here: https://www.gs1.org/services/check-digit-calculator.
Most of RCN variable measure trade items can be print in label scan printer like CAS 5200 automatically. Remember to program correct RCN format and item SKU number into scale.
Then the POS system can read the item with price automatically.
RCN with Weight or other measure information
Format of RCN with weight information is similar to RCN with price information. Just replace the price part to weight information as below:
| GS1 Prefix (2) | Department | Item (3) | Weight (5) | Check Digit (1) |
| 2 1 | DD | III | WWWWW | V |
For example, 21 10 001 01234 1, means apple weight 1.234Kg.