Looking for sku/barcode scanner manifest/database creation help.

September 16, 2015 4:28 PM

Hello, I have a very small eBay store. I just purchased 850 units of name brand make up. I don't have a manifest. I would like to create one. I am thinking about hooking up a cheap barcode scanner to my computer to make a manifest in excel. Question 1: Cheapest barcode scanner ideas? Question 2: Besides Excel is there maybe a database out there so that I can scan it and all its information comes up and then print from there?
posted by tricide to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

Best answer: You can get into an industry-standard LS2208 for less than $100, and much cheaper used. Just google (Shopping) "symbol barcode scanner" for lots of models or go straight to "LS2208". Remember to get a cable.

You can then paste that (or scan it straight) into something like http://www.upcdatabase.com/itemform.asp. If you're _really_ good with Excel macros it would be possible to scan the barcode into an Excel cell, and with VBA paste it into that webpage, then parse what comes back to populate the sheet with the details.
posted by achrise at 5:49 PM on September 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

Yeah, you want the Symbol LS2208. We have about 100 of the things at work and they're cheap and bulletproof. The specific one you want is the LS2208 with USB cable, without stand. (They come with about a dozen different cable types but the USB is the only one you want. The stand isn't much use for anything but scanning papers.)

For 850 items, I think Excel is the way to go. You can create a little table of what barcode is what product on a second tab and use the VLOOKUP function to pull in the name of the product for each barcode.
posted by pocams at 8:08 PM on September 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thank you guys! I will look into it!
posted by tricide at 2:40 PM on September 18, 2015