Code 128

That freedom is the point. An EAN can only hold thirteen digits, and only ones GS1 gave you.

What to use it for

• Products with no barcode from the supplier
• Your own SKU, printed on a shelf label
• Bin location labels on the racking
• Anything internal that a scanner needs to read

Every handheld scanner made in the last twenty years reads Code 128 with no setup. So does a phone camera.

Keep it short

Code 128 gets physically wider as you add characters. A twenty-character code on a small label prints so narrow that a cheap scanner cannot resolve the bars.

Twelve characters or fewer is a good ceiling for a shelf label. If your codes are longer than that, the code is the problem, not the printer.

Where it goes wrong

A printed internal code ends up in the barcode field instead of the real one off the box. It scans in your stockroom and it fails everywhere else, because no marketplace has ever heard of ACM-HOOD-BLU-M.

Keep the two apart. The supplier’s number goes in the barcode field. Yours goes in the SKU field, and Code 128 is how you make yours scannable. Which barcode goes where has the full set.