What is an EAN code?

A wholesaler receives a shipment from a supplier. The receiver scans the barcode on every box and the system knows at once which item it is. Without the code, someone has to read each description and look it up by hand.

The code is useful precisely because it comes from outside. Your own item number means something only to you, whereas everyone in the chain knows the barcode number. Web shops, marketplaces and buyers often ask for it, and you use it to match a supplier's items to your own records.

What goes wrong? The same code is stored against two items, a new packaging variant gets no code of its own, or a digit shifts when someone retypes it. Then the warehouse scans the wrong item, and stock and the delivery note stop agreeing.

Keep a few things in mind. Each variant of a product, such as another size or colour, usually has its own code. The code belongs with the item in the central item data, not in separate lists kept by different departments. And check codes you take over from suppliers before you load them in bulk.

A barcode number does not replace your own item number. You use both: the code for recognition outside the company, the item number for your own work, your price list and your orders.

Make sure the code on the packaging or label matches what is in your data. A scan that finds nothing costs someone time to sort out, every time.