If you don’t wish to retrieve labels from our Portal but rather create your own (common if you have a warehouse system for example), you can use your own labels as long as you provide us with data so we can read the barcodes.
The barcodes to be used are intended to uniquely identify each carton/parcel in an order line. To link a barcode with an order line, the system needs to read the barcode then extract 2 things to associate the barcode with the correct order line.
- TrackingID – unique line level ID provided in the original order data, matching the item to its order line.
- Carton Identifier/Increment – some sort of unique suffix to identify each carton/parcel if a line contains more than 1. This is usually simple an increment e.g. 001,002,003 etc
Generating Tracking IDs
Unique tracking IDs can be created by combining a+b below :
a) Your 5 digit client id, this would identify the client uniquely amongst all the clients in system. e.g. 12345
b) a 8 digit unique line level ID. If the information provided is less than 8 digits long, zero padding is required (eg if 1234 is provided, this section would contain the value 0001234). The combination of the clientID+this line id means we can always identify a barcode to a specific client, order and order line.
So for example for client 54321 with a 2 line order number abc123, could have the following tracking ids
line 1 – Tracking ID 5432100000001
line 2 – Tracking ID 5432100000002
The tracking ids must never repeat so the simplest method is to use a simple rolling sequential increment, the client id part at the start ensures your tracking ids never cross ranges with any other clients.
Generating Unique Barcodes per Box/Carton
As we only use the first part of a barcode (tracking ID) to link the scan to the order line, all we need to uniquely indentify each carton is an incremented value tagged to the end of the trackingID on the label, we do not require you to pass us this in the order data as we will derive the trackingID from the barcode to identify the line, we recommend a simple 3 digit incremental value, zero padded accordingly which results in each label having a totally unique value.
As an example, consider the order abc123 below:
line 1 – Tracking ID 5432100000001, PackageQty=3
line 2 – Tracking ID 5432100000002, PackageQty=2
Note: PackageQTY should be the TOTAL packages for that order line, if the item comes in 2 boxes and the NoOfItems ordered is 3, the PackageQty would be 6.
We would expect the following barcodes:
Line 1 Barcode Labels (x3) : 5432100000001001, 5432100000001002, 5432100000001003
Line 2 Barcode Labels (x2) : 5432100000002001, 5432100000002002
In the above example, the carton identifier section is using a simple 3 digit incremental value, this could actually be any unique value but for simplicity a sequential value is easier. To clarify, in your order file we only need the unique tracking id against each order line, then when we scan the barcodes we will identify the item from the tracking id part and determine if it is a unique box (i.e. have we already scanned it) using the increment at the end, so we do not require the increments to appear in the order file.
The final three digits are merely used to identify unique scans so we do not require them in the order file at all. You can start the increment at 001 again on each new order line as the unique part is the tracking ID.