Artisan POS & 2005 Sunrise

All versions of all Artisan POS Software products are compliant with the new retail bar code standard from the Uniform Code Council, known as "2005 Sunrise".

This extends the use of UPC codes (12-digit UPC-A & 8-digit UPC-E) to include the international EAN-8 and EAN-13 formats, collectively now all known as UCC codes (UCC-8, UCC-12, and UCC-13).

2005 Sunrise requires that all these formats be accepted as product identifiers, and preserved "as-is" without removing check digits or the leading UPC digit (formerly known as country code or system code), or making any assumptions about the internal breakdown of the codes (to separate the company code & part number).

Note: This may require you to reprogram your bar code scanners to accept EAN-8 and EAN-13 bar codes (but most modern scanners accept these by default); and you must make sure that your scanner is transmitting the entire UPC code, including the check digit.

Artisan itself accepts any bar code (or other identifying code) with any number of digits, letters, or punctuation characters, up to at least 15 characters. Newer versions support up to 20 characters in the UPC and Alt Code fields, 15 characters in the Item Code (SKU) field.

Artisan makes no assumptions about the relationship between UPC (UCC) codes and Vendor Code (identifying who the vendor is), Vendor's P/N (part number), Manufacturer Code, Mfr P/N, or SKU (your internal product ID), which are all stored in separate fields in the Product Record.

Note: In the future, we may make Artisan automatically correct missing or invalid check digits on input (from incorrectly-programmed scanners or from mis-keyed manual input), but this still conforms to the intent of the specification. When given correct input, it will always keep it unchanged.

The final requirement is that any unregistered product codes generated for internal use do not conflict with valid public UCC codes, including UPC codes beginning with 1, 8, and 9 (in addition to those previously in general use). Artisan meets this requirement by using either alphanumeric codes, or numeric codes with fewer than 8 digits. Unlike some other programs, we do not try to make a number that looks like a UPC code when we print labels for products that are not pre-bar-coded.

Beyond 2005 Sunrise

The next requirement on the horizon, after 2005 Sunrise, is full "GTIN compliance". Technically, Artisan is already GTIN-compliant, since the only stated additional requirement is to be able to process and store 14-digit GTINs (EAN/UCC-14).

The UCC does, however, recommend (but not require) that GTINs are stored (no matter which length bar code is used) as 14-digit numbers by right justifying and zero-filling left as needed. Presumably this also includes the ability for different-length bar codes representing the same GTIN to automatically select the same Product Record. We will be implementing this in a later version of Artisan POS Software.

We believe that Artisan is also RSS compliant (though this is not a requirement of 2005 Sunrise), as long as it is used with scanners that can scan RSS bar codes.