1. What are barcodes?
Barcodes are the method by which data is represented in a visual and machine-readable form. They are usually placed on your e-tickets and scanned at the entrance of venues to be redeemed. Good to know, we don't allow the upload of diacritical. For instance: á, é, í, ó, ú. For the full list, see the bottom of the page.
⚠️ TO KEEP IN MIND:
Barcodes are a highly sensitive matter. Using the wrong barcodes can result in issues such as generating orders that contain non-scannable tickets. This is why we have created this step-by-step guide, to ensure that you can always upload your barcodes the right way, in the right format.
ALWAYS be on top of your barcode availability by activating barcode alert notifications!
2. How to add a new pool of barcodes.
2.1 What is a barcode 'pool'?
You should think of a pool of barcodes as a 'bucket' from where barcodes are taken to assign to your products and their tickets. In order for that to happen, you need to assign and connect the barcode pool to the specific products you want to have those barcodes linked to. In the following steps, we will explain to you exactly how to do that.
2.2 How to add a new pool of barcodes.
First thing first, log into your Convious Control Panel. Once you're in, look in your left-side menu for the 'Codes' tab, under the 'Venue' section.
By clicking on that tab, you will be redirected to the following barcode overview screen.
To add a new barcode pool, hit the big blue 'Add New +' button at the top right corner.
Click on it, and a new line will appear at the very top of your barcode pool list as shown below:
1. Give it a descriptive internal name.
2. Indicate the format.
3. Under 'type' column you must indicate whether the barcodes will automatically be generated by us (Generated), or if you will upload them yourself to the system (Uploaded).
4. Hit save.
Before we move on, let's take a quick look at the rest of elements in this 'Ticket barcodes' screen:
- Name: Under this first column you will find the different barcode pools you have created, each with the different internal names you have assigned to them. When there is a red file icon with an 'x' next to the name, it means that there are no products attached to that barcode pool yet. On the contrary, if you have a down-facing arrow icon, it means that there are products already connected to that pool of barcodes. By clicking on it, the following box will expand, and it will show you exactly which are the products that the pool is connected to, as well as those products' ID:
- Format: It indicates the type of format that the barcodes within that batch or pool have.
Convious supports the following barcode format types:
- QR codes
- EAN-13
- EAN-8
- Code-128
- Standard 39
- Type: With Convious you can choose to use generated barcodes* (automatically generated by our system - this has a great plus, which is that they don't run out, so you don't have to worry about uploading them every now and then or being left without barcodes!) or uploaded barcodes (provided by you).
*Using Convious generated barcodes also requires the use of the CodeReader scanning app.
It is also possible to print on the e-ticket the voucher that has been entered by the customer in the checkout during validation or use barcode integration (Elli, Merac). Please contact our support team for more information.
- Used in 24h: This column tells you how many barcodes out of that specific pool have been used in the last 24h.
- Barcodes left: The last column is an important one. It indicates how many barcodes are left before you run out. And as you might already know, being left without barcodes is no fun; it means not being able to sell further tickets. As you can see in the image above, when the barcode type is 'generated' the barcodes are unlimited, so you will never have that problem. However, when your barcodes are 'uploaded', it can happen, so you should always keep an eye on having enough barcodes. When that's the case, it will be marked as green, and you will also be able to see betwen brakets, an estimation of how long it will take for those barcodes to run out (based on your ticket sales data).
On the contrary, if there are no barcodes left, you will see a message in red indicating that there's 0 days left until there's no more barcodes. But don't sweat it, you can easily fix that by hitting the 'Upload' button to its right.
In the next step, we are going to tell you exactly how you can upload new barcodes, step by step.
3. How to upload your own barcodes in the Control Panel
We can add your barcodes to products sold via the Convious checkout so these can be scanned at your gate by your own scanning devices. It’s possible to connect 1 barcode file to 1 specific product or to multiple products.
Convious supports the following barcode format types:
- QR codes
- EAN-13
- EAN-8
- Code-128
- Standard 39
3.1 Step 1: Prepare and adjust your barcode file.
The barcode file that you are going to upload into your Control Panel must comply with some specific format requirements in order to avoid errors.
Make sure the file of barcodes you are about to upload...
1. ...is always in CSV format.
2. ...contains only one column (column A/first column) with the barcode numbers.
3. ...doesn't have rows with duplicated barcodes. This can result in a couple errors*, which is why it's so important that yoou make sure that all barcodes are unique.
4. ...your file is encoded in UTF-8 format.
*Error 1:
We strongly suggest doing a quick and easy check to avoid this from happening. You can do it by using Google Sheet's 'Remove duplicates' function:
On the Google Sheet where you are preparing your barcodee file, go to 'Data' on the top menu and then find 'remove duplicates' as shown in this screenshot.
*Error 2:
If you get this error it simply means that some of the barcodes you are uploading (either the whole file, or some barcodes within that file) are already uploaded in the system. Again, barcodes need to be unique and cannot be duplicated, so please double-check your files before you upload them to avoid this from happening. Keeping organized and clear file names, as well as indicating the dates of each file helps.
4. ...doesn't have barcodes that start with a 0 (this also leads the system to believe that the codes are numbers instead of plain text and will lead to errors).
5. ...doesn't have barcodes that end with characters such as: (;) - (,0) - (.0) or (,).
6. ...is saved in 'Plain text' format NOT 'Number' (if your barcode column has the format set as 'Number' this can lead to issues by which the barcodes break because the system treats them as numbers in a formula). To make sure your barcodes have a 'Plain text' format you can simply click on the header of the column to select all the values within that column. Then click on 'Format' on the top menu, and change 'Number' to 'Plain text'. Then save. We advise to use Google Sheets and not Excel.
Note about barcodes starting with a zero: We strongly advise not to use barcodes starting with a zero because this is more error-prone. However, if you still decide to supply barcodes starting with a zero make sure that the column is saved as plain text (see point 5).
Please note: Your file can have no more than 100 thousand lines.
3.2 Step 2: Where to upload the file.
Now that you have taken all the necessary precautions to avoid format issues by adjusting your barcode file, it's time to upload it!
Remember how in point 2 of this guide you learned how to create a pool of barcodes? Now you simply need to attach the barcode file you have prepared to it.
Simply drop your barcode file where it says 'Drag and Drop to upload or choose a file'.
4. How to connect barcode pools to your products.
Once you have created your barcode pools and uploaded barcodes to it successfully, the only thing left to do is to connect them to the products you are offering. To do so, simply follow the following steps:
4.1 Go to your 'Products' screen by clicking on the 'Products' tab in your left-side menu.
4.2 Select the option 'Connect to a pool of barcodes'
and then simply select the right pool from the drop-down menu (which you should have already created as explained on point 2 of this guide).
4.3 Save
Don't forget to scroll to the bottom of the screen until you find the blue 'Save' button. Then simply click on it to make sure that the connection you just created between the product you selected and the barcodes pool you have attached is saved.
5. How to delete previously uploaded files
5.1. Go to your Ticket barcodes and click on upload on the right barcode pool.
Now you should be able to view the files you have uploaded.
5.2. Click on the trash icon to delete the file you would like to permanently delete.
DONE!
6. Letters with diacritical marks
We don't support diacritical marks on letters. So the combinates below are not supported
-
Acute Accent (´):
á, é, í, ó, ú -
Grave Accent (`):
à, è, ì, ò, ù -
Circumflex (^):
â, ê, î, ô, û -
Tilde (~):
ã, ñ, õ -
Umlaut or Diaeresis (¨):
ä, ë, ï, ö, ü, ÿ -
Cedilla (¸):
ç -
Macron (¯):
ā, ē, ī, ō, ū -
Breve (˘):
ă, ĕ, ĭ, ŏ, ŭ -
Caron or Háček (ˇ):
č, š, ž -
Dot Below (·):
ȧ, ḃ, ċ -
Dot Above (·):
ẇ, ṗ, ṡ -
Ring (˚):
å, å̄