Inventory control and product tracking with barcodes

There are many different types of stock that need tracking and the most secure way of doing this is to track them using barcode labels or tags. Products usually fall in to three categories

Commodity products

This type of product needs no tracking down to individual product units, but you need to know when it came in and how much of it you have with perpetual inventory control.  An item with a specific product code can be held across many locations and the total quantity of the commodity in stock can be assessed easily with the stock by location report and the stock by product report. The movement of product as a result of sale, goods in or simply moving it to a new location is accompanied with a barcode scan provinding an electronic record of the transaction.

Serial numbered products

Products such as televisions instruments that have individual serial numbers.  When they are sold the individual serial number is removed from stock so that at any one point in time a complete list of serial numbers is held as well as the total number of units in stock.

Batch numbers

the use of batch numbers is a combination of a serial number and a commodity product.  The best example would be a pallet of bags of flour where it is necessary to track the data that the bags came in and their batch number without having to serially number each individual bag.

Component traceability

the use of kits all bills of materials combined with serial numbers provides traceability of the components of a product.

Retail and EPOS

Pass stock includes an over-the-counter sales system that caters for stock control of the storeroom and weathers front-end sales. The same system can also be applied to cash-and-carry situations where a portable terminal can be used to do the selling away from the counter.