Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Openbravo Retail WebPOS - Variable measure Barcode,Bluetooth Printer

Variable measure Barcode:

Openbravo WebPOS cannot read a variable EAN code that includes information about Item in different format according to GTIN specification. For example an EAN barcode may or may not include product price,product weight. In either case Openbravo WebPOS should be able to find the correct product and price/weight from Barcode.

Since Openbravo WebPOS doesn't support  variable measure barcode,we had to do a customization to support it.In our customers case,we have followed
the following format to support the barcode which contains Product code EAN and price/weight.
1-2(identify price(11)/weight(10)) // 3-7 digits product code EAN // 8-12 digits price or weight // 13 check sum

Barcode Implementation with Product code and Price/Weight:

The below example illustrates,how we were able to achieve the barcode Implementation which includes price of the product/weight of the product.
 
Product code for Chicken is 05187.


 Product Code for Tomato is 02398.





Retail store  purchased a bulk quantity of chicken, cleaned and packed into small bags.obviously weight will vary for every bag.So we need to bill based on weight and price need to be fetched from DB.Note:chicken price may vary everyday.We used Electronic Label Printer Scale + Barcode Weighing Scale and pasted barcode label on packet.This label have information of Product Name,packed date,Expiry date,etc.

In Billing counter,system will read this barcode and identify weight/product and fetched price from database.In our example,system red Barcode 1001587002505 and identified product as Chicken,quantity as 2.5 . System fetched price 36.50 from database and updated line net price as '701.25' (2.5*36.50)





In Saudi Arabia,people loved to select fruits and vegetables on their own(need to be weighed). Weighing is a time consuming process in final bill counter,so we placed an separate "Electronic Label Printer Scale , Barcode Weighing Scale" for weighing purpose(to speed up process,one weighing machine for every category). This machine is printing a label bar-code along with product name,weight,price per kg,packed date (information for customer) based on defined format and we pasted it on bag cover.

In Billing counter,system will read this barcode and identify price/product based on it. Based on Barcode 1102398005755,system identified product as Tomato,price as 5.75 and skipped the logic of fetching price from database.





Your customers are the reason your company exists: serving and retaining them is essential - Being Human is Good Business by Kristin Smaby
Very soon,we will release a video about variable measure barcode from our Retail - Hardware labs section.

What's Next?
A challenging task of Printing receipts via Bluetooth receipt printer from an Android tablet.We used printer "Zebra ez320" and successfully printed sample receipt without Hardware manager.Now,we are creating our own Hardware Manager for Android.Will get you soon with positive results.

Saudi Arabia - Retail Localization module
We created a Localization retail module for Saudi Arabia including all receipt's ,GS1 rules and barcode label printing.We removed all tax related information from display and also in Receipt .In addition to that,we printed Arabic product names along with English names in all receipt's.

If anyone interested in Openbravo retail implementation,please contact me via thirumalai@qualiantech.com
http://www.qualiantech.com/qualian_openbravoindia_ERP_contact.php

Qualian Retail RoadMap;
1.Employee Login Authentication via magnetic card reader.
2.Saudi Arabia - Payment gateway Integration
3.Variable measure barcode - User configurable screen
4.GS1 Integration (identifying Vendor and products)
5.Truck Sales - Hardware solution( Tablet/Mobile + Blue tooth printer + Blue tooth bar-code scanner)

Reference;
1.http://wiki.openbravo.com/wiki/POS_-_Reading_variable_measure_barcode