How to get barcodes for your products in Jordan

In short: An official barcode, for a product sold in other people's shops, comes from GS1 Jordan as a number registered to your company. Items you sell only in your own shop just need an in-store barcode printed from your till.

If you make a product and want other shops to sell it, such as packed za'atar, sweets or cleaning products, you will be asked for an official barcode. If you only sell unbarcoded items in your own shop, an in-store barcode you print yourself is enough. This guide explains the difference, the general route to an official barcode through GS1 Jordan, what the 625 prefix means, and how to print barcode labels from your cashier app.

Official barcodes and in-store barcodes

A barcode is a number a machine can read. The two kinds differ in who issued the number and where it works:

When you need an official barcode

• You make or pack a product under your own name and want a supermarket or a chain to stock it.
• A buyer or distributor asks for a registered number for each product before adding it to their system.
• You plan to export, and foreign markets read numbers registered with GS1.
• You have several sizes or flavours: each different pack needs its own number, because a shop's system treats every number as a separate item.

The general route to a GS1 Jordan barcode

GS1 is the international organisation that manages barcode numbers, and its office in Jordan is GS1 Jordan. Membership terms, required documents and fees are set by that office and can change, so its site, gs1jo.org.jo, is the reference. The steps usually run in this order:

1. Read the membership terms on the GS1 Jordan site
   The documents, the fees and how many numbers you need. Do not rely on a figure someone told you.
2. Apply as a business
   With the documents the form asks for, usually your business registration papers such as the commercial registration.
3. Receive your company prefix
   Called the GS1 Company Prefix, it is the fixed part of every barcode you will use.
4. Give each product a number
   Every product and every pack size gets its own number (GTIN). Keep a list of what you assigned so no number is used twice.
5. Print the barcode on the pack
   At a clear size, dark on a light background, and test the scan before printing a big run of packaging.
6. Keep up with renewal
   Most GS1 offices renew membership periodically, so ask when yours renews to keep your numbers registered to you.

What the 625 prefix means

The first three digits of an EAN-13 barcode show which GS1 office issued the number. 625 belongs to GS1 Jordan, so products whose numbers were registered in Jordan usually start with 625.

The prefix is not the country of manufacture. A Jordanian company can make its product abroad and keep the 625 prefix, and a foreign company can make goods in Jordan with numbers from home. The last digit is a check digit calculated from the others, so if a scanner misreads a digit, the check fails and the scan is rejected instead of selling the wrong item.

Do not invent a number that looks official

It is tempting to write 13 digits starting with 625 and print them on your product. That number is not registered to you, and it may already belong to a real product from another company, so your goods show up in a supermarket's system under someone else's name. The same goes for numbers sold outside GS1: a chain that checks the number is registered to your company may turn them down.

If the product stays in your own shop, use an in-store barcode. If it will be sold elsewhere, get its number from GS1 Jordan.

In-store barcodes: unbarcoded items in your shop

GS1 reserves numbers starting with 20 to 29 for use inside a shop, best known from scale labels that carry an item code plus the weight or price. Ghalleh reads these scale labels once you turn them on in settings and set your scale's format.

For items that arrive without a barcode, such as sweets, spices you pack yourself or accessories, Ghalleh makes a 12-digit internal number starting with 990 and prints it as Code 128. The number is built so it can never be a real product barcode, so it will not clash with an item that arrives later with a factory barcode. To try an EAN-13 number or work out a check digit, use the free barcode generator on the tools page.

Barcode labels from Ghalleh

On Ghalleh's barcode labels screen you pick the items and how many labels each, and they print on the shop's thermal printer. An item with no barcode gets an internal number first, saved on the item, then its label prints, so it scans at the till from day one. Ghalleh also prints shelf price tags.

Only the owner, a manager or someone allowed to change prices can give an item a barcode, so no one changes item numbers without you knowing. And for supermarkets, Ghalleh carries about 388 ready packaged items with their company logos and barcodes, so you do not type them in one by one.

Common questions