How to Make UPC Bar Codes
If you want to run a professional, larger scale retail business and have the ability to track and report store sales data, you will need to have UPC bar codes printed for your products. The method below is for retail businesses that sell 100 products or less, as it can become cost prohibitive (and time consuming) to have each UPC bar code generated individually with this process if you have thousands of different types of items to label.
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Instructions
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Gather your UPC information, including the UCC company prefix that should have been assigned to you when you applied with the Uniform Code Council. (See Resources.) You will also need to have each product in your database assigned to an item number (keep this information in a computer file next to the product name and description for easy access).
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Go to CreateBarCodes.com or a similar bar code--making site (see more suggestions in "Tips") and sign up for an account. At some point you will need to give your credit card information so that the cost of generating your UPC codes will automatically be billed prior to your receipt of them.
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Select the UPC bar code style that you prefer (UPC-A and UPC-E are the main two styles---"E" is a thinner UPC used on small items). Then, type in your UPC code and the item number (one to five digits long) that you assigned to the first product, and your item code data. You will then be asked to enter pricing information for your product. Leave the other options (magnification, bar width, and resolution) as they are preset, unless you specifically need the bar code to be a different size.
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Preview your UPC code before purchasing it (expect to pay around 10 to 20 dollars, depending on the site you chose). You can have the bar code emailed to you or in some cases downloaded automatically to your computer. The bar code file will be a fairly large EPS file.
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Tips & Warnings
Before incorporating your UPC code into a product packaging design, be sure that your graphic designer's image editing software is set up to read the black as "100% black" rather than a color separation (CMYK). This is a requirement of most professional printers. If you need to get a UPC label printed once your bar code is generated, simply go to a bar code label printing site, like ScanSmart.com. All you have to do is upload your new UPC bar code file to the system.
