General bar code information

General information about the bar code type and where it is used.

General information	General purpose	Numeric only

Industry advice

Usually, companies within industries have already agreed to use a specific type of bar code. It is wise to consider using the same type of bar code, that your competitors and customers may already be using.

Bar codes for internal use only

Although you can use any of these bar code types, the general purpose types are checked.

Numeric only bar codes

Numeric only bar code types are good for printing bar codes which contain numeric data. The resulting bar code symbol is usually smaller than printing the same data using other bar code types.

Although Code 128 is not numeric only, it is good for numeric data; it has a special numeric mode (subset C). The JIT range of software products automatically uses the numeric mode, to give you the most efficient bar codes.

If you need bar codes to store alphanumeric data (i.e. letter A-Z, digits 0-9, etc.) choose a bar code type which is not numeric only. The most popular is Code 128, but increasingly UCC/EAN-128 is used; because it has many clearly defined messages (each preceded by an Application Identifiers) that all companies can use to share important data.

Bar code readers

Most inexpensive bar code readers can read all of these bar code types. However, POSTNET, RM4SCC and FIM are usually only used for mail. The ability to read POSTNET or RM4SCC is usually only available with 2D bar code readers.