In this article, you'll learn:
- How to create location barcodes using a Dymo printer and Dymo Label Writer software.
- How to create location barcodes using an online barcode generator.
About Location Barcodes
Barcodes store important information and make retrieving that information easy. For example, you can scan a barcode for an inventory item and view data like the item description, current quantity, wholesale price, retail price, and more.
Location barcodes contain data for specific locations in your warehouse such as a bin, a row, a rack, etc. When you are processing new inventory during the intake process, you can scan a location barcode and have that location added to the item's record.
This helps your fulfillment team quickly locate purchased items within your warehouse. You can also scan and change an inventory item's location if you are consolidating products into one location or rearranging your warehouse.
How Location Barcodes Benefit Your Shop
- Scanning location changes saves your team significant time.
- Easily consolidate remaining variants of an item into one location.
- Scan go-back items to immediately see exactly where an item belongs.
- Access and view location history for an item.
Determine Your Location Setup
Shops will naturally differ in how they set up or arrange their warehouse or storage space. Setup will depend on the size of the space, the volume of inventory, and the personal preferences of the shop.
How you choose to set up your warehouse or storage space impacts how you will create location barcodes. There needs to be a logic to it in order for your team to benefit from the ease of locating items to feature in live sales, restock, fulfillment, and more.
For the purpose of this article, we are going to create a three-part location barcode using the below example as our location setup:
- Aisle: Aisles, in this example, are horizontal and contain rows and bins. Naming an aisle can be as easy as A, B, C, etc. and you can add numbers if aisles function as a section or department of your warehouse (e.g, A1, A2, A3, etc.).
- Row: Rows, in this example, are vertical columns of bins.
- Bins: Individual containers where inventory lives.
Print Location Barcodes Using a Dymo Printer
We recommend using a Dymo 4XL printer and the Label Writer Software to create location barcodes. To do this, you'll need:
- A Dymo 4XL printer
- 3 x 1 Direct Thermal Labels (must be the Dymo brand)
- Dymo Label Writer Software (not Dymo Connect)
- Select the Design and Print Labels menu.
- Select the Labels tab, then select your preferred label type.
- Some shops will use the same label type they use for product barcodes to maximize the use of purchased labels.
- Select the Insert tab to configure your label.
On the Insert tab, you can add specific elements in your barcode and configure how they should read when scanned.
- From the Insert tab, locate the Label Objects on the left side of the window.
- Add a Counter and Barcode element to your barcode and make adjustments as needed.
- Your label might have a Click here to enter text object. You can select this object and delete it from your barcode.
- Double-select the barcode element and make the following adjustments:
- In the Data section, select Linked to Object.
- In the Show Barcode Text section, select None.
- Select OK.
- Double-select the counter element (e.g., 001) and complete the following fields:
- In the Text to Include section, enter your aisle name and a dash (e.g., A1-) in the Before field.
- Enter a dash and your bin identifier (e.g., -A or -1) in the After field.
- The counter (e.g., 001) represents the vertical row.
- Select OK.
Your 3-part barcode label should now include your Aisle - Row - Bin (e.g., A-001-A).
When you are ready to print labels, adjust your Number of Copies field and select Print.
As labels print, the counter, or middle value, will change. For example, if we have 10 rows, we would print 10 copies and our labels would read A1-001-A, A1-002-A, A1-003-A, and so on until A1-010-A.
Since the counter represents vertical rows, we could then walk our aisle and apply the labels to the top "A" bins. Back at the printer, we would then change our After field to -B and print the next 10 labels for our "B" bins.
Print Labels Using an Online Barcode Generator
Some shops have found success printing labels using an Online Barcode Generator, which allows you to create 10 barcodes at a time. For this generator, barcodes download to your device and you can print these labels as a batch using a label printer. This method works for both Mac and Windows computers.
For the below example, we'll also be creating a 3-part location barcode identical to the ones created using the Dymo printer.
- In the Linear Codes section on the right side of the page, select Code-128.
- In the Code-128 section, select Create Sequence in the top-right corner of the section.
- In the Prefix field, enter your aisle number and a dash (e.g., A1-).
- In the Suffix field, enter a dash and your bin identifier (e.g., -A or -1).
- In the Start Value field, enter your beginning row number.
- If you are starting on a new aisle, this value could be 1.
- If you have more than 10 rows and are printing a new batch of labels (since you can only generate 10 at a time), this could be 11.
- In the End Value field, enter the ending row number.
- If you only have six rows, for example, this would be 6.
- If you have 20 rows and are printing your first batch of labels, this would be 10.
- If you are printing your second batch of labels for your 20 rows, this would be 20.
- In the Increment field, enter 1. This is because you want each row value to increase by one.
- Select Generate in the bottom-right corner of the section.
If you wish to make adjustments to your list of labels, you can manually do so by clicking on the Data field and making changes. You can preview a sample label on the right side of the page. When you are ready to download, select the red Download button on the right side of the page. Your labels will download to your device.
Once our first batch of labels prints, we could walk our aisle and apply the labels to the top "A" bins. Back at the computer, we would then change our Suffix field to -B and print the next 10 labels for our "B" bins.
Learn More
- Change Inventory Locations Using Location Barcodes. Learn how to change an inventory item's (or variant's) location or consolidate multiple items into one location by scanning location barcodes.
- Refine Your Intake Process. Learn how to assign an inventory location to an item or item variant during the intake process.