Barcode labels can make life considerably easier for business owners, especially those with a large amount of stored stock or merchandise. They make the pricing, selling and recording of goods much simpler and more straightforward.

There are a few different types of barcode labels currently available, however, which can make it a little difficult for business owners to choose the right ones for their needs.

Let’s take a quick look at the different types of barcode labels and the applications they are best put to:

• Aluminium barcode labels. As they are extremely durable and hard-wearing, these barcode labels are best used in places which may see heavy use, wear and tear.

• Ceramic barcode labels. Consisting of a stainless steel base and a ceramic coat, these labels offer high heat resistance. This means they can withstand high temperatures as well as acidic and chemical substances.

• Polyester barcode labels. Made of polyester, these labels are bonded to items using superior quality industrial adhesive. This makes them much more reliable and durable.

In order to get the best out of your barcode labels, it is important to do some research and choose exactly the right ones for your needs and for the application you intend to use them for.

Posted in Barcode Labels by Bridget

For businesses with a large amount of stock, equipment or tools, security is a serious concern. Items can go missing or be stolen, and this is even more likely if there are no effective asset management or security systems in place.

There are many things you can do to keep track of stock and assets. Many business owners use barcode labels and asset tags along with asset management software to effectively keep track of everything belonging to the business. What some business owners don’t know, however, is that these barcode labels can also be used as a deterrent to theft.

You can now get security labels from barcode label suppliers which are specially designed to be tamper-proof. There are two main types:

• Tamper evident destructible labels. These labels cannot be removed as a whole. If someone does try to remove or tamper with them, they split into noticeable fragments.

• VOID polyester security labels. Rather than breaking apart when tampered with, these labels show up the word ‘VOID’ if the covering label is removed. The label cannot be re-used, effectively labelling the product as having been tampered with.

Posted in Security Labels by Grahame

Most businesses and organisations use barcode labels for keeping track of individual items. This is a great help when it comes to stock taking and inventory management, making the whole process faster and more efficient.

However, there is a way you can speed things up even more. Using container and pallet barcode labels, you can quickly and easily keep track of whole storage units, adding them to your inventory with one wave of your barcode scanner.

Pallet barcode labels are especially useful if you move whole pallets of goods. Whether you need to ship pallets to a new destination or simply move them between warehouses, barcode labels help you to track each pallet and monitor its progress. This way, you can identify when pallets are late, missing or lost, and take immediate steps to rectify the problem.

Pallet labels are specially designed to be incredibly durable in order to last as long as the pallet itself, and a big part of this is the 3M polyester laminated material they are made of. They are also affixed to the pallet using permanent adhesive, so you never have to worry about the label falling off or being accidentally removed in transit.

Posted in Barcode Labels by Bridget

Asset labels, also known as asset tags, can be hugely helpful for businesses and organisations. They allow you to keep track of all of your property, including valuable items such as computer equipment, furniture and machinery.

When all of your company property is asset tagged, it is indelibly marked as belonging to you. This can act as a deterrent to theft, but it also means that you can track items if they are lost, misplaced or stolen. It can also be useful if you regularly loan items to other businesses, as you can keep track of what’s out on loan and when it needs to be back.

However, unless your asset labels are incredibly durable, they will not give you any of the aforementioned benefits. If they can be easily removed, it means that your property can be easily stolen. The best thing to do is to mark your property with tamper-evident asset labels that are specially designed to break into noticeable pieces when someone tries to remove them.

Another benefit of durable labels is that you can use them on property stored in all kinds of environments, such as in freezers where temperatures are very low, or in high temperatures where other labels tend to crack and chip.

Posted in Asset Tags by Geoff

Asset labels can be more useful for your business than you may realise. They have many advantages, such as the three outlined below…

Advantage #1 – Asset labels allow you to track items more easily

If an item is misplaced or stolen, you are more easily able to pin down its whereabouts using asset labels and the corresponding asset management software. Similarly, if you loan items or equipment to other companies, asset tags help you to coordinate the process and ensure that everything is returned safely and on time.

Advantage #2 – Asset labels help to speed up the auditing process

Taking stock of a large quantity of items can be a time-consuming and difficult task, but it can be vastly improved by using asset labels which allow you to quickly scan and record each item. It is also more than likely that mistakes will be made in a large audit process, but asset labels can vastly boost efficiency and accuracy in this area.

Advantage #3 – Asset labels help to prevent theft

An item that is tagged with an asset label is more likely to be noticed if it goes missing, which can act as a deterrent to burglars. What’s more, you can buy tamper-proof asset labels which split into noticeable fragments when removal is attempted.

Posted in Asset Tags by Bridget

Managing the inventory for a large quantity of stock can be an arduous and time-consuming task, particularly if you aren’t making use of technology to help you keep track. There is no need to make things more difficult for yourself; using something as simple as barcode labels can save you a huge amount of time.

Making a mistake when doing a weekly or monthly stock take can have serious implications for a business, giving you an inaccurate picture of your inventory and the performance of the business. It can also cause a bit of a panic if it is assumed that something is missing, or you may not notice that something actually has gone missing.

The way to counter these problems is to improve efficiency in your inventory management. Applying barcode labels to each and every item as it comes onto the premises takes only a short amount of time, as does checking your stock levels using a barcode scanner.

You can find out quickly and easily what is and isn’t there, as well as tracking items using their barcode labels. This allows you to check the progress of orders as well as locating anything that may be missing.

Posted in Barcode Labels by Grahame

The use of barcode labels is common practice these days. Barcodes have proved to be a great method of recognition, pricing, location and classification. These widespread applications are not just for industrial usage, but for retail and consumer use too. When you buy any packaged product from the market, they most often have barcode labels attached or the barcode printed on it.

So how does the common person make use of these barcodes? We can hardly carry an industrial barcode reader with us every time we visit the grocery store. The answer lies in your pocket. It’s your mobile phone.

Smartphones

If you happen to have a smartphone, then it can help you to translate the barcode into a language which you can read and understand. For those of us who are not familiar with smartphones, it is a new generation of phone which runs applications and connects to the internet. They have their own operating system, much like your computer. You may even be familiar with a few of these smartphones. These include popular phones like Apple’s iPhone and RIM’s BlackBerry.

How does it work?

So how do smartphones read barcodes? Almost all smartphones have a camera. This camera acts as the hardware for the barcode reader. In addition to the camera, you also need to download the application for your respective smartphone. This application has the required software program to recognise the barcode label and translate the information for you.

Advantages and applications

This may come in handy when you want to check out the price and other details of any product at a store. You wouldn’t have to take a product to the counter every time you have a query. These barcode label reader applications on smartphones are also equipped to read other kinds of codes, like the QR-codes. A great benefit is that once you read the barcode label with your phone, you can save the information for future use or simply check it online if you have an active internet connection.

Posted in Barcode Labels by Geoff

Barcode labels offer an effective and efficient way to speed up the entire data processing for any type of business venture. Therefore, it is important for organisations to have barcode labels to ensure the smooth functioning of their business. In earlier days, dot matrix and laser printers were most commonly used for making barcode labels.

Laser printers project an image on the drum to attract toner particles and transfer data onto the paper. Unlike with dot matrix printers, laser printers can quickly get the matter printed on paper. This is the reason why most barcode and asset label manufacturers now use laser printers for printing.

Barcode labels and asset tags are such tools that greatly help business organisations to track their tools and equipment. Whether it is a laptop, desktop, flash drive, mobile phone or any other asset, barcode labels can help to track them with ease.

Asset labels can be purchased in different types and sizes. You can even get the name, logo and other important company details printed on the labels. This in turn will help businesses to track their items when placed amongst other assets. While many people think that asset labels are expensive, this is not so. In fact, barcode labels and asset tags are the most affordable ways to track your company assets.

Be it a departmental or retail store, warehouse or any other business place, barcode labels can be helpful. So, if you want to ensure efficient functioning of your business, using barcode labels is a good option.

Posted in Barcode Labels by Bridget

While looking to effectively manage your inventory items, it is important to know what products you want to hand. Proper inventory management involves tracking existing inventory items. Besides, it is also important to control the transfer of units to avoid inventories from dwindling to levels that can affect the company operations.

There are three different aspects of inventory management. The first aspect is to complete everything in time. It is important to understand the time taken by the supplier for processing the order and executing the delivery. Knowing this, organisations can ensure that their entire process runs smoothly. Using barcode labels and asset tags will be a good option to track all your inventory items. The key to effective inventory management is to calculate the buffer stock.

Some useful advantages of asset tags

Asset tags are tools that are perfect to use in places like supermarkets, retail stores and warehouses, etc. These tools can also be customised based on your needs. For instance, you can add your company name, logo and contact number etc. on asset tags. Different adhesives are used to ensure that these tags are affixed properly onto the surface.

With a number of barcode label manufacturers out there, you can easily find one on the internet. Here you can look at different designs and materials used for making barcode labels and asset tags. You can even order barcode labels online. So, if you are looking for the best way to manage your inventory items, using barcode labels would be a wise decision.

Posted in Barcode Labels by Grahame

Almost every organisation ceaselessly strives to decrease their expenditure and save money. However, investing in asset labelling and tracking systems could eventually help your organisation save a lot of money in the future.

Even if your company has a policy that they will not buy any new equipment till such a time, the least that can be done is to make an audit. If possible you can also implement systems that will help in preventing your company’s assets from being misplaced or stolen.

If you think that keeping track of your company’s fixed assets, their maintenance and status is becoming a herculean task, then asset labels can be the answer to your problem. These are some simple tools which are used for recording as well as identifying valuable business equipment. Asset labels are available in a wide variety of materials and styles. They can be attached with the use of permanent adhesive and can also be customised to have your own business’s name and logo.

It is also used to label equipment. It is advised to maintain a register with the information of the assets in case of a fire or theft. This will prove helpful in keeping track of the goods. In addition, the asset labels help to make an insurance claim, as it acts a proof of the materials that were in stock.
The printing of labels can be done on aluminium foil and polyester type materials, which are not only durable but can easily stick to almost all types of surfaces. Some of them will leave the word “VOID” behind if the label has been removed from the surface. These are just some simple measures to avoid any possibility of theft.

Labels can also have a barcode printed on them. This is a useful feature which can be used for audit checks. The entire process of audit can be carried out very quickly with the scanning of barcodes combined with the use of asset management software.

Asset labelling and tracking software increases the efficiency of organisations. These systems not only give you a pinpoint location of your equipment at any given point of time, but also provide information about repairs and maintenance and the overall status of the equipment.

Posted in Asset Tags by Geoff