GS1 barcodes for a South African shop's own products

How a South African shop gets GS1 barcode numbers for products it packs or makes, and how those numbers relate to the SKUs its own till scans.

By Achekam · 11 October 2026 · 5 min read · For Retail businesses in South Africa

A deli starts packing its own spice rubs. A bakery sells its rusks in branded bags. A candle shop makes a range under its own name. At first, the products are sold only over the shop's own counter, and a handwritten price label does the job. Then a bigger store, a farm stall chain or an online marketplace asks to stock them, and the first question is: what is the barcode?

A barcode for your own product is not something you make up. In South Africa there is one official route to a number that every retailer's system will recognise. And once you have it, you need to decide how it fits with the codes your own till already uses.

What a GTIN identifies

GS1, the global standards body, states that a company can use the Global Trade Item Number, or GTIN, to uniquely identify all of its trade items. The GTIN is the number encoded in the barcode on a product's pack. Each distinct product, such as a different flavour, size or pack quantity, gets its own number, so a store's system can tell your small bag of rusks from your large one.

GS1 South Africa states that whether a product is sold in South Africa or anywhere in the world, the seller will need a GS1 barcode number or GTIN. In practice, the moment your product is sold through someone else's till, it needs a number that their system can look up, and that number has to be unique across every product they sell, not just yours.

Getting numbers from GS1 South Africa

GS1 South Africa describes itself as the official supplier of barcodes for South Africa and the country's only registered barcode supplier. Its home page, GS1 South Africa, is where a business starts the process and finds the services described below.

GS1 South Africa offers Activate, an online service for registering new GTINs and barcodes, alongside barcode verification, an item measurement service and a check digit calculator. GS1 South Africa's site sets out how a business obtains its numbers; Activate is then where new GTINs and barcodes are registered online, product by product.

Before you register, list your products the way a buyer will see them. Each variant that a store would stock separately needs its own GTIN: the plain and the chilli rub, the small and the large bag, the single candle and the gift box of three.

SKUs are yours; GTINs are shared

Investopedia explains that each business creates its own SKUs for internal tracking, unlike universal product codes, which are standardised across manufacturers and stores. That is why the SKUs for identical products differ from one business to the next.

The difference matters for a shop that makes some products and buys in others:

A GTIN cannot be invented by your shop, and a SKU means nothing outside it. For products you make and sell elsewhere, you need a GTIN. For products you only sell yourself, a SKU is enough.

Check the barcode before printing labels

A barcode that will not scan at a customer's till causes more trouble than no barcode at all. Before a large print run:

• Check the check digit. The last digit of a GTIN is calculated from the others, and GS1 South Africa's check digit calculator lets you confirm it.
• Test the printed barcode. Size, colour contrast and print quality all affect scanning; GS1 South Africa offers barcode verification for this.
• Measure the product if a retailer asks for dimensions; GS1 South Africa's item measurement service exists for that.
• Keep a list of each product, its GTIN and its description, and update it before any new variant goes on sale.

How Achekam's till finds a product

In Achekam, products are listed and created in the Item Master in the Accounting menu, on the server, with a SKU, name, category, selling and cost price, opening quantity and VAT treatment. The Item Master needs the Point of Sale, Warehousing or Wholesale add-on.

There is no screen for recording a product's barcode separately. A scanner at the till finds a product only when the scanned code matches its SKU. That has a practical consequence for products you make yourself:

• If you want staff to scan your own products at your own till, the SKU you give the product in the Item Master needs to be the same number as its GTIN.
• If you prefer short internal SKUs for your own products, staff will not be able to scan their GTIN barcodes at the till; they will have to find the product another way.

Decide which approach suits your shop before you create the products. The same rule applies to bought-in goods: if you want them scannable, their SKU must match the barcode on the pack. How to design a SKU scheme that still makes sense on reports is covered in designing SKU codes.

Decide the SKU before the product exists

The timing matters because of another limit. No screen lets a business change a product's price, cost or VAT treatment after creating it, or deactivate it. A product created with the wrong details stays on the list.

So before creating each of your own products in the Item Master:

1. Register the product in Activate and confirm its GTIN.
2. Decide whether its SKU will be the GTIN or an internal code, using the same rule for the whole range.
3. Confirm the selling price, cost price and VAT treatment.
4. Create the product once, with all of these correct.

From the first label to the first store

Get your GS1 numbers before the first stockist asks, register every variant, test the printed barcode, and only then load the products into your till. For keeping fake goods out of your supply chain, read counterfeit stock from suppliers, and for another trade's approach to codes and scanning, parts stock, SKUs and barcodes.

General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.