Barcode EPOS for trade merchants

What scanning is actually worth

A trade counter sale is typically four to twelve lines. Keyed in by code, that is perhaps ninety seconds and a realistic chance of a wrong line. Scanned, it is twenty seconds and the line is right by definition.

Multiply that by the number of sales in a Saturday morning and scanning is not a convenience — it is the difference between one person on the counter and two. It also removes the most common source of stock error, which is a sale posted against the wrong product.

Scanning that works the way staff do

Most keyboard-wedge scanners simply type the barcode followed by Enter. That only works if the cursor is in the right field, which on a busy counter it frequently is not.

PlanIt EPOS captures scanner input anywhere on the sales screen. A scanner sends its characters in a fast burst, which is distinguishable from someone typing, so the scan is recognised and added as a line regardless of where the focus happens to be. Staff scan; the line appears. There is nothing to remember.

Hardware

Any USB or Bluetooth keyboard-wedge scanner works, on Windows, macOS, iPadOS or Android. There is no proprietary scanner to buy and no driver to install, because the browser sees a keyboard.

Products with no barcode, and products with several

A trade catalogue never arrives fully barcoded. Loose fixings, cut lengths, bagged aggregates and anything you break out of a box will not have one, and some products will have several — the manufacturer’s, the wholesaler’s, and one from a previous system.

• A product can carry multiple barcodes, all of which resolve to the same item
• You can generate and print your own barcodes for products that have none
• A pack and a single can each carry their own barcode with their own price and stock effect
• Scanning a supplier’s barcode on goods-in matches to your product even if you sell it under your own code

The lines that never get scanned — sand, timber offcuts, anything weighed — are added as tiles on the sales screen instead, grouped by category, so they are a tap rather than a search.

Barcodes on the way in, not just the way out

Most of the value people miss is at goods-in. Booking a delivery in by scanning is faster than reading a delivery note, and it catches the substitutions and short deliveries that otherwise get absorbed into your stock figure.

In PlanIt EPOS you receive against the purchase order and scan the items as they come off the pallet. What was ordered, what arrived and what is still outstanding stay separate, and stock rises by what physically turned up.

Label printing

Barcodes are only useful if they are on the goods. Shelf-edge and product labels print from the catalogue, so a new line is barcoded the day it lands rather than at some point in the future.

Labels carry the price and the barcode, which means a price change is also a labelling job the system can produce a batch for — rather than a list somebody works through by hand.

Scanning and stock accuracy

Every scan writes a movement to the stock ledger — out on a sale, in on a receipt, and either way on a return. Because the ledger is append-only, the resulting quantity can always be traced back to the events that produced it.

This is why scanning improves stock accuracy so much more than it improves speed. A keyed sale can be posted against a similar-looking product. A scanned one cannot.

Getting a catalogue barcoded

1. Import your product list, including any barcodes you already hold, from CSV or Excel.
2. Import supplier price files — PDF, Excel or CSV — which frequently carry barcodes you did not have.
3. Capture barcodes at goods-in as deliveries arrive, so the catalogue improves through normal work.
4. Generate and print your own barcodes for the lines that will never have one.

Doing it that way means you are not stopping trading to barcode a catalogue. The lines you sell most get barcoded first, because they are the ones that keep arriving.

Scanning, pricing and returns

A scan does more than identify a product. It has to arrive at the right price for the customer standing in front of you, and that price is rarely the one on the shelf edge.

In PlanIt EPOS, scanning a product resolves pricing in the same fixed order used everywhere else: the customer’s contract price, then their trade band, then list, with quantity breaks applied on top. The counter scans; the correct price appears on the line with the reason it was applied. There is no separate lookup and nothing for a new starter to memorise.

Returns

Returns are where a barcode alone is not enough. Scanning tells you what came back, but not what the customer paid for it — and crediting at today’s price when they bought it at last year’s is how a return turns into a loss.

So a return in PlanIt EPOS is raised against the original receipt or invoice. The scan identifies the product; the linked document supplies the price actually charged and caps the quantity at what was bought. A reason and a disposition — back to stock, damaged, return to supplier — are recorded, and the stock movement follows automatically.