Written by Marcus Rivera — former Amazon warehouse manager. More about me →
If you sell on Amazon FBA, you have seen the "case pack" requirement. Each outer carton needs a scannable label that identifies what is inside without opening the box. That label uses ITF-14. I processed thousands of these cases every shift — here is what you need to know.
EAN-13 goes on the retail unit — the individual product on the shelf. ITF-14 goes on the shipping carton that contains 12, 24, or 48 of those units. The ITF-14 is a 14-digit number: the first digit is the packaging level (1-8), the next 12 digits identify the product, and the last is a check digit. Use our ITF-14 generator to create your case labels.
The heavy black frame around an ITF-14 barcode is called the bearer bar. It is not decoration. Corrugated cardboard has a rough, uneven surface that causes ink to bleed. The bearer bar equalizes printing pressure across the entire barcode area so every bar prints at the same density. Without it, the outer bars print thinner than the center bars, and the scanner reads a wrong digit.
I learned this at Amazon when a vendor shipped 800 cases with ITF-14 labels that had no bearer bar. The scanner read every case as a different product. It took two associates an entire shift to manually key-enter the GTINs.
Generate your case labels with our free ITF-14 barcode generator and print on 4"x6" thermal labels for best results.
Written by Marcus Rivera — former Amazon warehouse manager. More about me →