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Question: I sell 100 foot rolls* of tubing, and the smallest unit of sale for me is one roll of 100 feet. However, my customer may sell a complete roll or cut it into smaller portions, the smallest being 1 foot. This is an industrial application, and the end unit does not cross a retail point-of-sale counter. The question is, what bar code should I being placing on my 100 foot roll?

Answer: There are two ways to handle this situation.

1. Establish 1 foot as the smallest possible unit and assign it a U.P.C. number (unit of measure is "FT"). Even though you will not be printing U.P.C. bar codes for this product (it hasn’t even been cut yet), you will need to assign it a number.

This way your customer can use the U.P.C. for price and inventory. The bar code that you place on the 100 foot roll should be the SCC-14 code with a package level indicator greater than zero (example PI 3).

2. Establish 1 100 foot roll as the smallest unit and assign it a U.P.C. number (unit of measure is "EA"). Place a U.P.C. bar code on the roll. When your customer cuts the tubing into smaller pieces, he will need to use a conversion formula inside his computer (at the point of sale, the U.P.C. equals 1 foot instead of 1 each) to convert the unit of measure to feet (100 x .01).

Problems: If someone buys 1 complete roll, they may only be charged for one foot. To prevent this, the computer system used at the point of sale should force the clerk to enter a quantity.

Note: The same situation may exist for a length of pipe. The pipe may be sold by the manufacturer in 10 foot sections but sold by a distributor in 1 foot sections.

IBCA  Phone: 215.489.1722  Email: kelleyt@quadii.com

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