Tell Netiva how your bins, cases and labels work, and the agent builds a web app your team uses to receive, count and look up stock by scanning a barcode.
Build a barcode inventory web app for a warehouse with about 2,000 SKUs in labeled bins. Items have a name, SKU, photo, unit, home bin and units on hand. Each item can carry several barcodes (unit, inner pack and case), each with how many units one scan adds. Store GTINs as 14-digit text. Staff sign in and use one scan screen with receive, put-away, count and lookup modes that reads the phone camera or a USB scanner. In put-away, scanning an item then a bin sets that item’s home bin. Save every scan with the person, bin and time, and send unmatched codes to an unknown barcodes queue.
Most stockrooms already have a barcode on nearly everything, yet counts still land on paper because the one scanner in the building is wired to the register or a back-office PC. With a barcode inventory app — some teams call it an inventory scanner app — scanning moves to the phones your staff carry and to any USB or Bluetooth scanner you pair. Each scan finds the item, its bin and its pack size. Codes that match nothing wait in a queue instead of vanishing, and bin labels print from the same records.
The scan screen opens the phone’s camera in the browser. The same field accepts a USB or Bluetooth scanner in keyboard mode, which types the code and presses Enter for you.
A Barcodes collection links each code to its item with a pack level and a units-per-scan number, so one scan of a 24-unit case adds 24 units, not one.
Bins follow a naming pattern you choose, such as zone, aisle and shelf. A label sheet page turns the bins or items you filter into printable barcodes, so every label matches its record.
Staff sign in with their own accounts, so each scan is saved with who, where and when. Codes that match nothing go to a review queue, and a morning email tells the lead what’s waiting.
Netiva keeps your records in built-in collections. Here’s a starting structure — the agent adapts it to your prompt, and you can change it any time.
Everything on your shelves, keyed by the SKU you use in-house.
Each code printed on an item or its packaging, and what one scan of it is worth.
Every storage location, named exactly as its shelf label reads; each item points at one of them as its home bin.
One row per scan in any mode, including the codes nobody has matched yet.
Required field. Types are Netiva collection field types.
A typical first version. Ask the agent for more, or annotate the preview to change any of them.
Pick a mode and scan with the camera or a handheld scanner. Put-away takes two scans — the item, then its shelf label — and sets that item’s home bin. Each scan adds to a tally.
Signed-in usersWhat a lookup scan opens: photo, home bin, every barcode with its pack level, units on hand and the latest scans on the item.
Signed-in usersScan a shelf label to see the items homed in that bin, each with its on-hand total, then count the bin from the same page.
Signed-in usersCodes that matched nothing, with who scanned them, in which bin and when; link each one to an item or create a new item from it.
Signed-in usersChoose bins or items by zone or filter and print a sheet of barcodes with the code in readable text underneath.
Signed-in usersEvery scan, filterable by mode, person, bin and date, for checking what happened during a receiving shift.
Signed-in usersTell Netiva how your bins are named, which items arrive with manufacturer barcodes and which need your own labels. The agent drafts collections for items, barcodes, bins and scans.
Netiva doesn’t import your item file, so enter items in the collection grid or ask the collection assistant to draft rows. Then have it pad GTINs to 14 digits and fill in pack levels across many rows at once.
Check each scan mode in the live preview. Annotate a result card, a button or the tally, and the agent changes it while you watch.
Publish in one click, have staff sign in and scan real labels before you print a full set of bin labels. Every change is checkpointed, so a tweak that misbehaves is easy to roll back.
| Criterion | With Netiva | Traditional build |
|---|---|---|
| Scanning hardware | Staff phones scan with the camera, and USB or Bluetooth scanners type into the same field | Dedicated handheld computers loaded with vendor scanning software |
| Unmatched barcodes | Each unmatched code saved to a review queue with the bin, person and time | A “not found” beep, and the code gets written on a scrap of paper or lost |
| Getting started | Describe what you need in chat and watch it take shape in a live preview | Hire developers, or stitch together templates, plugins and a hosting plan |
| Content and data | Built-in collections with nine field types, bound straight to your pages | Set up and connect a separate database or CMS |
| Making changes | Ask the agent; every change is checkpointed and reversible | File a ticket, wait for a sprint, redeploy |
| Hosting and domain | Global hosting and automatic SSL; connect a custom domain from the Starter plan | Buy hosting, then install and renew SSL certificates yourself |
| Code ownership | Clean production code you own and can export | Locked into a template, plugin or agency setup |
Cartons arrive with an ITF-14 case code and UPCs on each unit. Receiving scans the carton once to add the full case, and packers scan the unit in hand to see which bin it lives in.
A customer asks whether there’s another one in back. The associate scans the product on a phone, sees which back-room bin it belongs in and the latest scans on it, then walks to that shelf instead of to the office PC.
Supplies get repacked from bulk cartons into bins with no barcode of their own, so the supply room prints internal Code 128 labels for items and bins. The clerk at the pickup window keeps a USB scanner plugged in, so a code on a carton or bin opens its page without typing.
Camera scanning depends on light, label size and print quality, and scans save as they happen in the browser, so Wi-Fi or cell coverage in the aisles counts too. Try real shelf labels and case codes on your team’s phones, in back aisles and cold rooms, before printing a zone.
USB and Bluetooth scanners must be set to keyboard (HID) mode, usually with an Enter suffix, which you set by scanning codes from the scanner’s manual. Netiva doesn’t configure scanners or label printer drivers.
Internal codes work fine on your own shelves. If you sell your own products through retailers, they’ll usually ask for GTINs licensed from GS1. Netiva doesn’t issue barcodes.
Each item has one home bin and one on-hand number, so a SKU split between bulk and a pick face needs a stock collection keyed by item and bin. Nothing subtracts either — receive scans raise on hand and a count resets it — so count busy items on a schedule you can keep.
No. Netiva builds web apps that open in the phone’s browser, so staff sign in from a link and start scanning, with nothing to install. The first time the scan screen opens, the browser asks for permission to use the camera. Browsers only offer the camera to pages served over HTTPS, and Netiva handles SSL automatically.
Yes, as long as the scanner works in keyboard mode, which most handheld scanners support. In that mode the scanner types the code into whichever field has focus, then sends Enter if you’ve set that suffix. Ask the agent to keep the cursor in the scan field and look up the item on Enter, and a scanner on a back-office PC or paired with a phone works like the camera.
GS1 expects a separate GTIN for each packaging level, so a case usually carries its own code, often as an ITF-14 barcode on the carton. In the app, each code is a row in the Barcodes collection with its pack level and units per scan. Scanning a 24-unit case code during receiving adds 24 units to the item; scanning the unit code adds one.
Number fields drop leading zeros, and many GTINs start with one. A UPC-A holds 12 digits and an EAN-13 holds 13, and some scanners report a UPC-A as 13 digits with a leading zero. GS1 US recommends keeping GTINs in a 14-digit text field, zero-filled on the left, so the app pads every code before matching and each barcode finds the same item.
The scan is still saved with the raw code, the person, the bin and the time, and it goes to the unknown barcodes queue instead of disappearing. A lead can link the code to an existing item — for example, a supplier’s new case code — or create a new item from it. From then on, the same code matches on the first scan.
Yes — a camera or handheld scanner reads a GS1-128 label like any other code, but the string holds several values, each after a numbered Application Identifier: (00) for a pallet’s SSCC, (01) for the GTIN, (10) for the batch or lot and (17) for the expiration date. Ask the agent to split the scanned string into those parts and match the GTIN to an item. Test your suppliers’ real labels first — scanner settings change how the separators come through.
Drafted with AI assistance from Netiva’s product pages and reviewed by the Netiva team. Example data models, screens and prompts are illustrative starting points, not customer projects.
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