Weighed goods with scale labels: scan the sticker, the weight comes with it

How it works at the counter

1. At the weighing point — the deli counter, the vegetable stand, the back of the butcher's — a worker puts the goods on the scale and presses the item's key on the scale.
2. The scale prints a sticker: the name, the weight, the price, and an EAN-13 barcode starting with 2.
3. The customer carries the bag to the till. The cashier scans the sticker like any barcode.
4. PosMasr reads which product it is and how much, and adds the line with that quantity. No typing, no reading the scale's screen, no 1.25 turning into 12.5.

The scale and the PC are not connected at all: the sticker is the only link. That is what lets one scale serve three tills, or three scales serve one.

What is inside the code

The sticker's barcode is 13 digits in four parts. Take a label reading 21 01234 00750 C:

Whether 00750 is a weight or a price depends on how the scale is set, and PosMasr has to be told the same. The general picture of this barcode family is in the barcode types guide; this article is about making it work.

Setting it up in PosMasr

1. Settings → Features → tick Scale barcodes: EAN-13 labels with price or weight.
2. Scale barcode prefix: the first digits of your scale's labels (it starts as 2 — read the next section before leaving it).
3. Barcode value: Price (in piasters) or Weight (in grams) — whichever your scale prints.
4. While you are there, tick Fractional quantities & units too, and mark the weighed products by weight with kg as the unit, so the receipt shows 0.750 kg and not a rounded number.
5. Save.

In PosMasr Cloud the same switch is in the shop's settings in the web app, and the tills read the labels on the selling page the same way.

Getting the prefix right

This is the one setting people get wrong, so here is the rule PosMasr follows: the item code is every digit between the prefix and the eighth digit. The value is always digits 8 to 12.

• Prefix 21 on the label 21 01234 00750 C: the item code is 01234. Clean.
• Prefix 2 on the same label: the item code becomes 101234 — the scale's second digit is now part of it, and a product whose barcode is 1234 is not found.

A two-digit prefix also keeps the other 2x ranges free for the barcodes PosMasr generates for products that have none. They always keep clear of your scale prefix; with a one-digit 2 they have to move to 04.

Linking each product to its scale key

PosMasr finds the product from the item code in one of two ways — use whichever is easier:

1. Type the scale's item code in the product's barcode field. 01234 or 1234 both work; leading zeros are ignored.
2. Or scan one sticker of that product into its barcode field. Any later sticker whose first seven digits (prefix + item code) are the same is matched to it, whatever the weight.

The scale's own list of items and keys is set on the scale, from its keypad or its maker's software; PosMasr does not program the scale. Keep a small sheet of “scale key → item code → product” next to the scale the first week.

Weight or price in the barcode?

Most label scales can print either. The difference matters on the day you change a price:

With price labels the line total is weight × price, so it can also differ from the sticker by a few piasters, because the weight is rounded to the gram. If your scale can print weight, choose weight: PosMasr stays the one place where prices live. If it prints price only, make changing the price on the scale part of every price change.

What the till shows

• The product lands in the cart with its quantity — 0.750 kg — and its line total.
• The status line confirms it: Scale: × 0.750 kg, so the cashier sees at a glance that it was read as a weighed item.
• For a product marked by weight, two stickers are two lines, each with its own weight — two bags, two lines.
• If stock is tracked for that product, it goes down by the weight sold.
• A sticker PosMasr cannot match — wrong prefix, an item code no product has — gives the usual “No product with barcode …”, never a wrong product.

Label scale or a scale wired to the till?

PosMasr also reads a scale connected to the PC by cable: tap the product, the weight lands in the cart. That is covered in full in the wired scale article; here is only the choice:

You do not have to pick one: both settings live side by side, so a shop can have a wired scale at the till for walk-in orders and read labels from the deli counter's scale.

Butchers, delis, vegetables: how it usually looks

• Butcher: trays of mince, cuts and chicken are weighed and labelled in the back and go into the fridge ready. At the till it is scan, scan, pay — no weighing while the customer waits.
• Deli counter in a supermarket: cheese, luncheon, olives and pickles are cut and weighed at the counter; the customer carries the labelled bags to the main tills with the rest of the basket.
• Vegetables and fruit: a scale in the aisle with a worker next to it, so the tills never stop for a bag of potatoes.
• Nuts, sweets and spices: boxes and bags filled and labelled in quiet hours for the busy ones — the same idea as the butcher's fridge.

The items that are not weighed — a pack of rice, a bottle of oil — keep their maker's barcode, and the ones that came with none can get an in-store code.

Which package has it

Reading scale labels is part of the scale features: on the desktop from Silver up, online from the Shop plan up (prices). The 7-day desktop trial has everything open, so you can scan your own scale's stickers before you decide.

Quick answers

Read next

PosMasr CloudOnline menu and QR ordering at the table PosMasr CloudMoving PosMasr desktop to the cloud Running the shopOne POS for supermarket, pharmacy and café