How do I use bar codes? I want to check items in and out

Improve Consulting

Hi, There is no video demonstrating the use of bar codes and the few words in the help are not clear at all.

Has anyone ever used this feature for inventory management?

Lauren

Jeff Reisman

Our financial system creates a bar code for the bill of lading number, it gets printed on the BOL. Warehouse admin uses an entry form: she scans the BOL bar code from the printed BOL, and the picker's bar code from a sheet on the wall, creating new rows each day for new BOLs.

Supervisor in the warehouse can scan a BOL bar code into the search bar to find the row, updates the carrier field by scanning from a list of trucking company bar codes, and updates the status to, for instance, "IN PROGRESS" from a list of status bar codes.

Prior to this system, 5-10 BOLs out of 200-250 each day would be lost somewhere in the warehouse, and supervisors had no way of knowing who was picking that order or what company was supposed to be picking it up. Now all BOLs are tracked from initial scan to CLOSED status. We are implementing a new financial system with real BOL management, much more advanced scanners, real time inventory updating, etc., but for the past two years this helped the warehouse establish and get used to a workflow of tracking order picking through the life cycle, and so the transition to this more advanced system will be much easier.

Jeff Reisman

Yes you can scan bar codes into Text/number fields.

Keep in mind that Smartsheet interprets scanned barcodes just as if you're typing the values in. If your barcode is all UPPER text, and the caps lock is on or shift is pressed, the value will be recorded in lower case.

We scan barcodes for Bills of Lading numbers, then scan a bar code for the assigned picker's name to record their name on the row, bar codes for updated status values, and scan carrier names.

We use Code-39 and Code-39 full ascii bar codes. I generate them from this site for free:

https://barcode.tec-it.com/en/Code39?data=TEST

Improve Consulting

Thanks Jeff,

That is really helpful. From where are you scanning the bar code for the bill of lading? From within smartsheet?

And have you setup the picker's name barcode to automatically populate information in a row?

Jeff Reisman

Our financial system creates a bar code for the bill of lading number, it gets printed on the BOL. Warehouse admin uses an entry form: she scans the BOL bar code from the printed BOL, and the picker's bar code from a sheet on the wall, creating new rows each day for new BOLs.

Supervisor in the warehouse can scan a BOL bar code into the search bar to find the row, updates the carrier field by scanning from a list of trucking company bar codes, and updates the status to, for instance, "IN PROGRESS" from a list of status bar codes.

Prior to this system, 5-10 BOLs out of 200-250 each day would be lost somewhere in the warehouse, and supervisors had no way of knowing who was picking that order or what company was supposed to be picking it up. Now all BOLs are tracked from initial scan to CLOSED status. We are implementing a new financial system with real BOL management, much more advanced scanners, real time inventory updating, etc., but for the past two years this helped the warehouse establish and get used to a workflow of tracking order picking through the life cycle, and so the transition to this more advanced system will be much easier.