UPC-A

UPC-A is the most common barcode symbology in the United States, encoding 12 digits used to identify consumer goods, books, magazines, and newspapers.

The UPC-A barcode is the most common and well-known symbology in the United States.

You can find it on virtually every consumer good in your local supermarket, as well as on books, magazines, and newspapers.

There are a number of UPC variants, such as UPC-E, UPC 2-digit Supplement, and UPC 5-digit Supplement.

UPC-A encodes 11 digits of numeric data along with a trailing check digit, for a total of 12 digits of barcode data.

The human-readable digits are printed for the benefit of us humans only. The scanner doesn't pay any attention to them whatsoever, and a barcode printed without these numbers works just as well as one that includes them.

A UPC-A number consists of four areas:

1. The Number System
2. The Manufacturer Code
3. The Product Code
4. The Check Digit

Normally the number system digit is printed to the left of the barcode, and the check digit to the right. The manufacturer and product codes are printed just below the barcode, separated by the guard bar.

Number System

The number system is the first digit in the UPC number and identifies the type of the product. For example, if the barcode starts with digit 5, this barcode is a coupon code.

NS	Description
0	Regular UPC codes
1	Reserved
2	Weight items
3	Drug/Health items
4	In-store use on non-food items
5	Coupons
6	Reserved
7	Regular UPC codes
8	Reserved
9	Reserved

Manufacturer Code

The manufacturer code is assigned by the UCC council to each manufacturer or company that distributes goods using the UPC-A barcode. To apply for a manufacturer code, visit . Note that UCC has started assigning manufacturer codes longer than 5 digits to conserve the numbering resource.

Product Code

The product code is assigned by the manufacturer. The product code is a 5-digit number, so it can accommodate 99,999 possible product codes for each manufacturer — far more than enough for any manufacturer in the world!

Check Digit

The check digit is used to verify that the barcode is generated or scanned correctly. The check digit is calculated based on the rest of the barcode digits. Read the following section to learn how to calculate the check digit.

The nominal X dimension is 13 mils. The printable X dimension ranges from 10.4 to 24 mils.

The coupon code is a UPC code with number system 5. A coupon code contains four areas:

1. Number System 5
2. Manufacturer Code
3. Product Family code and value code
4. Check Digit

The UPC-A check digit is calculated using the standard Mod10 method. Here are the steps to calculate the UPC-A check digit:

1. From right to left, starting with the odd position, assign the odd/even position to each digit.
2. Sum all digits in the odd position and multiply the result by 3.
3. Sum all digits in the even position.
4. Sum the results of step 2 and step 3.
5. Divide the result of step 4 by 10.

The check digit is the number that, when added to the remainder, equals 10.

A UPC-A symbol can be divided into two halves, each consisting of six digits separated by a center guard bar pattern. The whole symbol is surrounded by two guard bar patterns. The same digit has a different encoding depending on whether it is in the left half or the right half.

The encoding pattern for digits in the left half always starts with a space, while the one for digits in the right half always starts with a bar and ends with a space.

A UPC-A symbol has the following structure:

1. Start guard bars, always with a pattern bar+space+bar
2. Left half, six digits encoded using encoding schema A or B
3. Center guard bars, with a pattern space+bar+space+bar+space
4. Right half, six digits encoded using encoding schema C
5. Stop guard bars, always with a pattern bar+space+bar

Legacy links (no longer active) (1)

• www.uc-council.org