Bar Codes

A bar code consists of black vertical bars and white spaces that vary in width that can be read by a bar code scanner. Bar codes can also contain other identifiers like letters, characters and numbers. In general, a bar code is a unique and universal identifier. A bar code scanner captures and decodes the information contained by a bar code.

The role of barcoding in the modern world cannot be underestimated. These days bar codes are everywhere. They can be used not only for household items that come from supermarkets or retail stores, but also in law firms, doctors offices, post offices, security applications and countless others.

The reason why barcoding became such an essential tool is that it brings a lot of benefits to any business. Barcoding allows to run the business more accurately, automate the processes, make them more efficient and error free, it can ensure the growth of your business in general. 

Bar codes are also extensively used in online stores and barcoding becomes increasingly important in the contemporary ecommerce world. In Sana we provide the Bluetooth barcode scanner and the Camera barcode scanner content elements. Using the Bluetooth barcode scanner and the Camera barcode scanner content elements, you can scan the product bar codes and quickly add them to the shopping cart. If you have a high volume of sales, the process of adding products to the shopping cart manually can be prohibitively time-consuming. A bar code scanner can save you a significant amount of time if your products have a bar code.

All products must have correct bar codes added to them in SAP. Only if a product has a correct bar code in SAP, it will be possible to add it to the shopping cart by scanning the bar code, otherwise the scanned product will not be recognized.

Add a Bar Code to a Material in SAP

SAP uses EAN (International Article Number) to add bar codes to the materials. EAN is an internationally standardized number which uniquely identifies a material. For more information, refer to the official SAP documentation International Article Numbers (EANs).

To add a bar code in SAP, open material master data and go to: Additional Data > Additional EANs.

Sana Commerce Cloud supports multiple bar codes per material. You can create multiple bar codes for different units of measure added to materials. If you have multiple bar codes for the same material and different units of measure, Sana Commerce Cloud will retrieve all of them. In this way, a customer in the webstore can scan a bar code and easily add a material to the shopping cart already in the correct unit of measure.

NOTE

Multiple barcodes for different units of measure added to materials are supported starting from Sana Commerce Cloud 96_7 in SAP ECC.

Here, you need to specify the EAN category and in the EAN/UPC field, enter the bar code for the necessary unit of measure.

Now, you can easily add this material to the shopping cart by scanning its bar code in the Sana webstore.