How to Print Barcode Labels for Shopify Products (SKU, UPC & GS1 Explained)

Barcode labels are the small piece of infrastructure that makes fast, accurate inventory possible. Without them, every stocktake, every receiving session, and every point-of-sale lookup is a manual search. With them, it’s a scan. But getting started raises a surprising number of questions: What’s the difference between a SKU and a barcode? Do you need to buy barcodes? And how do you actually print labels that scan reliably? This guide walks through all of it for Shopify merchants.

SKU vs. barcode: they’re not the same thing

These two get conflated constantly, and mixing them up leads to real problems. They serve different purposes:

• A SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) is your internal reference code. It’s text-based, can be any length, and can be alphanumeric — e.g. MED-GLD-HOOP-01 for a medium gold hoop earring. You invent SKUs to organize your own catalog. They aren’t universally recognized.
• A barcode is a scannable code — typically numeric — that a scanner reads to pull up the product. The same barcode identifies the product no matter where it’s sold.

In Shopify, these live in separate fields on each product variant. The SKU field is for your internal code; the Barcode field is for the scannable number. Keeping them distinct is what lets you organize inventory and scan it.

Where do barcodes actually come from?

Here’s the distinction that saves people money and confusion:

If you only scan inside your own operation (your warehouse, your Shopify POS), you don’t need to buy anything. You can generate your own barcode values — often derived from your SKUs — and print labels for them. The scanner just needs a code that maps to the right product in your system.

If you sell through other retailers or marketplaces, you generally need official barcodes from GS1, the global standards body. These are the universal identifiers big retailers require. The common formats:

Format	Digits	Used for
UPC (GTIN-12)	12	Standard in the US and Canada
EAN (GTIN-13)	13	Global standard (a UPC is just an EAN with a leading zero)
EAN-8	8	Compressed version for very small products
GTIN	—	Umbrella term for the GS1-assigned numbers above

Official GS1 barcodes aren’t free. As a rough guide, a single GTIN runs about $30 one-time, while a package of 1,000 GTINs is around $2,500 upfront plus a $500 annual renewal. So buy them only when you actually need universal identifiers — not for purely internal scanning.

How to add a barcode to a Shopify product

Once you have a barcode value (whether GS1-official or your own internal code):

1. In your Shopify admin, go to Products and open the product.
2. Click into the variant you want to tag.
3. Under Inventory, type the value into the Barcode field.
4. Click Save.

For a large catalog, doing this one variant at a time is painful — this is where a bulk workflow (CSV import or a barcode app) saves hours.

How to print barcode labels

You have two broad paths:

1. Shopify’s Retail Barcode Labels app. Shopify’s own free app generates barcodes based on your variant IDs, lets you build a label template (product name, price, barcode), and prints to common label stock — Avery 5160 sheets on a standard printer, or a dedicated label printer like a Dymo or Zebra. It’s a solid starting point for basic POS labeling.

2. A dedicated scan-and-label app. If labeling is part of a broader inventory workflow — receiving stock, doing stocktakes, updating quantities — a purpose-built app keeps printing and scanning in one place. Our Barcode Scan & Label app is built for exactly this: generate and print labels for products that don’t have scannable codes yet, then use the same app to bulk-update inventory by scanning. That tight loop — print a label, then scan it to receive or count — is what makes barcode labeling pay off operationally rather than just cosmetically.

Label best practices (so they actually scan)

A label that won’t scan is worse than no label — it stalls your whole workflow. Follow these:

• High contrast. Black bars on a white background. Avoid red, since scanners read with red light and can’t distinguish it.
• Print at 300 dpi or higher. Low resolution smears the bars.
• Keep the quiet zone. Leave clear white space at both ends of the barcode — don’t crowd it with text or logos.
• Prefer vertical bars. They minimize distortion when scanned.
• Test before bulk printing. Print a couple, scan them with your actual scanner, then run the batch. Catching a sizing issue on label #2 beats reprinting 2,000.

Putting it to work

Labels are only step one. The payoff comes when you scan them to move inventory faster and with fewer errors — receiving shipments, running cycle counts, and clearing stocktakes in a fraction of the time manual entry takes. If that’s where you’re headed, see How to Bulk-Update Shopify Inventory With a Barcode Scanner for the scanning side of the workflow.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to buy barcodes to use them in my own store? No. For internal scanning and POS, you can generate your own codes and print labels for them. You only need official GS1 barcodes (UPC/EAN) when selling through retailers or marketplaces that require them.

What’s the difference between a SKU and a barcode again? The SKU is your internal, human-readable reference code. The barcode is the scannable number a device reads. Shopify stores them in separate fields.

Can I print labels on a regular printer? Yes — you can print to Avery-style label sheets on a standard printer. For higher volume, a dedicated label printer (Dymo, Zebra) is faster and more durable.

What if my products don’t have barcodes yet? Generate and print your own labels for them. An app like Barcode Scan & Label can create scannable labels for products that don’t have codes, so nothing gets left unscannable.

The takeaway

Barcode labels turn inventory work from searching into scanning. Understand the SKU-vs-barcode distinction, buy official GS1 codes only when you genuinely need them, add the values to your Shopify variants, and print labels that follow the contrast and quiet-zone rules so they scan first time. From there, the labels power everything downstream — receiving, counts, and POS.

Want to print labels and scan-update inventory in one place? Get Barcode Scan & Label.