Based on what you’ve described, it sounds like you’re using price-embedded (or variable price/weight) barcodes, where the first part of the barcode identifies the product and the remaining digits contain the calculated price.
At this time, Square doesn’t natively support parsing price-embedded barcodes in the way many grocery stores, butchers, and delis use them. Square expects a barcode to match a single item in your Item Library rather than reading part of the barcode as the item ID and the remainder as the item’s price or weight.
As a workaround, some sellers:
- Sell by manually entering the weight at checkout using unit-based pricing.
- Use fixed barcodes for packaged items with standard weights.
- Explore third-party integrations that support variable-weight barcode workflows if this is a core part of their business.
I know that isn’t the ideal answer, especially for businesses selling products by weight. It would be a great feature request, as support for GS1/price-embedded barcodes could make the checkout process much more efficient for sellers like yourself.
Hopefully other community members with similar workflows can share what’s worked best for them as well.
Square Champions Expert and member of the Square Champions group. (But NOT a Square employee, just a seller like you) Was my post helpful? Take just a moment to mark it as a solution.
