Written by Marcus Rivera — former Amazon warehouse manager. More about me →
I spent 12 years at Amazon inbound receiving. The #2 reason for FBA shipment rejects — right behind bad box dimensions — was EAN-13 barcodes that did not meet spec. I rejected a pallet of 200 units once because the barcodes were printed at 75% scale. The seller was a small brand launching their first product. They had spent months on the formula, the packaging, the listing. One thing they guessed on: the barcode size. That guess cost them two weeks of sales while they reprinted and reshipped.
Amazon requires GS1-issued EAN-13 numbers. You cannot make up your own barcode numbers or use cheap reseller codes. Buy a GS1 company prefix, then assign product numbers within your range. A single GS1 prefix covers up to 10 products. If you plan to launch more SKUs, buy a larger capacity. Once you have your numbers, use our EAN-13 barcode generator to create the actual scannable barcode image — free, instant, nothing leaves your browser.
Test your printed barcode with a phone scanner app before shipping to FBA. The 30 seconds you spend testing saves the two weeks your inventory spends in problem solve if the barcode fails at the dock.
EAN-13 goes on the individual retail unit — the item the customer receives. The shipping carton containing 24 units gets an ITF-14 case label. Do not put EAN-13 on the outer carton. The receiving scanner reads the case label, not the unit barcode. I processed mislabeled cases literally every shift.
Written by Marcus Rivera — former Amazon warehouse manager. More about me →