Native UPC Support

This is specific to certain stores, not everyone needs to work with barcodes, like if they sell virtual/downloadable products and I don’t see it being used around the all world as well (SKU in big part of the cases solve this kind of problem)…
We maintain on the WooCommerce core only what is used by most people, if not needed for everyone, will be integrations/plugins area.

Claudio thanks for the reply.

The issue is not about barcodes as much as it is a unique identifier (key). A SKU can be anything someone wants to put in the field so it varies from reseller to reseller.

But a UPC/EAN is a registered unique code for almost every physical product sold. For example if you are selling a hammer, the UPC for that hammer is unique and is a standard format.

Example by searching UPC on Google:
HAMMER CURVED CLAW FBGL 20OZ
UPC: 037103226884

Reseller 1 SKU = 6492722
Reseller 2 SKU = 11400N-037103226884-CP
Reseller 3 SKU = 11400N

A SKU for the exact same product can have dashes, added letters or any other information the reseller wants to add.

Let’s take Amazon as I mentioned before. 100% of a new product you want to list has to have a UPC code. Otherwise they would have a 1000 resellers listing the same exact product a 1000 different ways.

In my situation I am important products from multiple distributors and they both sell the same exact product but with slightly different SKU’s. Without having a unique (key) UPC field and code there is no way to keep them straight.

I know there are work arounds and I have created custom fields to handle this. BUT because this is such a fundamental part of any inventory / product management system I can’t believe such a simple feature is not part of the core code.

Look I love Woocommerce and like I said this is not a show stopper because there are work arounds. I was simply surprised it’s not there and wanted to provide feedback to improve the product with such a simple addition.

Oddly, not 1 request on ideas.woothemes.com for UPC codes, so I guess there isn’t much demand for it amongst the user base.

WOW no request!! THAT IS AMAZING
since most retailers (at least in the N. America) use UPC for product tracking (thinking amazon.com) you would think that it would be a good field to add. I think most folks don’t sell outside their woo site? Most of all my retailers (we do wholesale) require a UPC for our items when ordering.

Only having a SKU field really does not solve this issue. We use SKU for product ID when ordering from our suppliers and UPC when working with our retailers.

I would add it- its pretty important for shopowners (like me) that sell wholesale to other retailers and drop ship, do fulfillment.

Let me know –

cheers!

Oddly enough he isn’t the only one looking for this functionality. I don’t know how much more a unique number attached to almost every trade item in the world needs to be to find it’s way into an ecommerce platform such as Woocommerce.

Here’s the link in case your not familiar with what a UPC code is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Product_Code

Looking forward to seeing a UPC option in Woocommerce soon.

Regards

All items in my shop are one-of-a-kind or digital/virtual items, therefore no need AT ALL for the UPC codes.
Glad for the less overhead code.

fran that might be fine for your shop but for those of us who have tens of thousands of products supplied from a half a dozen distributors with different SKU’s for the same product, ONE extra field is not considered overhead.

Every major product produced now days has a UPC or EAN number. In fact you can not even list a product on Amazon (which accounts for 46% of ecommerce) REQUIRES a UPC.

Many of us have found using custom fields as a way to solve this problem. But I think what some find odd is how can Woocommerce not include this as a basic feature.

Still only has 3 votes on ideas board.

is there a way to add a custom field to Woo to solve this? – for whatever reason Woo users only sell on their Woo site and nowhere else.. Magento, Shopify, 3dcart all have this option.. i just don’t get it..

Mark what I find interesting is a SKU can be ANYTHING you want it to be. But a UPC/EAN is unique and can not be changed. I see a number of distributors take the manufacturers SKU and add their own designation to it which means it is worthless for matching a product from multiple distributors.

My site pulls near real time inventory from 5 distributors. At least 3 or 4 carry the same product but my site uses an automated plugin that keeps track of inventory from each distributor.

SKU is worthless as a way to match product and inventory quantity because.

Look at something like the photo industry.
B&H photo, Adorama, Amazon & Ace Photo all carry the exact same Nikon D500.
But B&H’s sku is NID500, Adorama INKD500, Amazon B01A7Q0J3Y and AcePhoto is ACE52274.

But if you put the UPC into any of these sites you get the same product because it is the only unique code assigned to each product.

In some industries such as cosmetics and anything FDA related require a UPC by law.

Lee, i get what SKU/ UPC is
what i don’t get is why not add this to Woo?

What plugin are you using to augment Woo for adding custom fields?

In the spirit of WooCommerce improving its suitability to more professional (high-end) e-commerce companies (which is a market Magento, and various other options make a point of catering to), I would also like to see core support for these basic product identifiers.

I have just give a couple of votes to this on the ideas.woothemes.com page.

Here is the comment I put on the idea: https://ideas.woothemes.com/forums/133476-woocommerce/suggestions/13639959-upc-field

As EAN/UPC codes are a universally recognised product identifier both online and offline, and are generally applied to any product being sold through multiple channels (e.g. sales occurring from channels other than directly from the manufacturer) I would like to see a field for this added to WC core, under Inventory. The overhead of this extra field, for those not needing it, will be completely inconsequential. Whereas the overhead of having to use a plug-in for such basic functionality is potentially much higher.

The most common globally recognised product identifies are EAN, UPC, and ISBN.

It was mentioned earlier in this discussion that there are very few requests for this feature. That surprises me. One possible explanation for that, to some extent, may be that the kind of companies who rely on things like EAN/UPC codes, are also the kind of companies that skim right past platforms like WooCommerce when considering their options for an e-commerce solution. Having been developing e-commerce solutions since 1998, I can say that in my experience options like WooCommerce (and the various other WP e-com plug-ins) where not typically considered by companies wanting a solid e-commerce platform.

I’ve seen that change, to some extent, in the last couple of years. But I think there is still much more potential for WC to expand into that market. Small additions, such as built in support for EAN / UPC / ISBN may be the very thing that would prevent a large company from skimming right past WC, thinking “Well, it doesn’t even support something so basic to the retail industry (as a universal product identifier)… how can it be a serious player?”

Whilst that line of thought is all hypothetical, I suspect there’s very likely some elements of truth to it. Again, I say that as someone who have been developing e-commerce solutions for nearly 20 years.

It would be rather easy to add support for UPC codes in WooCommerce if you need it. You can add a custom product meta field in the backend, and display it wherever you would like to on the front end / emails / invoices.

This shouldn’t be something holding you back that you have to wait for WC to add it to core.

I know I’m late to the party… I am developing a number of ecommerce sites via woocommerce, and my products will be advertised through Google Shopping, ebay and amazon. UPC codes are required, so as to compare “apples to apples.” I plan on using custom fields to list my UPC codes, and then include those in my feeds. But, it would be so much easier to have it a part of woocommerce.

Just my 2 cents worth.

I also recently got in to trouble. GTINS/EAN/Barcodes codes are required for googleshopping.

https://www.datafeedwatch.com/blog/gtins-required-per-may-16th/

Cannot make a feed now to googleshopping. SKU is internal productid for the shopowner itself.

Please add to core!