ERPAG 5.1
Labeling in ERPAG
Automated marking (labeling) and recording of inventory items are one of the priorities of any serious company. Manual data entry in a large and diversified range of products leads to a slowdown of business processes and the possibility of error as a consequence of the human factor.
ERPAG, as a serious ERP system, provides the ability to create and print labels for the purpose of labeling goods and materials. Once labeled, goods or materials will be much faster and easier to record later in all business processes. At the same time, labels can also contain information that is of importance to the end customer.
Given the fact that the users’ needs for the size and content of the labels are different, ERPAG has developed a system that allows the creation of completely different labels that can be printed on completely different formats of papers-labels. Printing is done directly from the browser so you do not need any additional cloud services or additional applications. You just need to have installed and properly set up local or network Laser or InkJet printer. At the same time, it is also possible to print on thermal Label printers (such as Zebra, Dymo etc.) with the result of printing in HTML format (not in ZPL or EPL format), so the print quality depends on the size of the label as well as the resolution of the printer itself.
Due to the ability to manipulate margins of the printing paper, we recommend using Google Chrome. In other browsers, it is not possible or it is partially possible to manipulate margins, so the printing can cause a possible deviation, causing the labels to be printed partially or completely outside of the intended place (slot/cell).
In order to meet the different needs of users, ERPAG has divided the process into three parts:
1) LABEL TEMPLATE – which allows you to create a template for an individual label;
2) LABEL PRINT LAYOUT – which allows you to define the number and size of labels on the printing page;
3) PRODUCT SETUP – where a unique Barcode and Label Template is defined for each individual product.
To make it clearer what the difference between Label Template and Label Print Layout is, try to imagine a label. It may contain information such as SKU, Product Name, Barcode, Price, etc. Also, this same label has its own dimension, width, and height. The design of such a label is created as a Label Template.
We can print this label on different paper formats, and in order to enable such printing, we need to create a Label Print Layout. When printing, ERPAG will generate a label and insert it into the appropriate Print Layout.
Label Template
To create a Label Template, you need to activate the menu Administration-Label Templates and then activate the CREATE button.
By creating a new Label template we can notice that the form is divided into several parts.
In the Document header section, the basic setup is defined as follows:
– Description (which you will need to know which label you want to define as the default label for a particular item);
– Price decimal number to show the prices rounded to the given decimal number on the labels;
– UOM for label dimensions where you can choose between inches or millimeters;
– Width (UOM) where you enter the height of the label in the unit of measure you previously defined;
– Height (UOM) where you enter the width of the label in the unit of measure that you have previously defined;
– Print resolution where you define the resolution of barcodes generated as photos (Maximum value can be 600dpi, however, the higher resolution means higher the size of the file your browser will need to print. So do not overdo it because the size can easily reach several hundred MB that the browser will not be able to support. The most common resolution is 150dpi where no loss of quality can be seen on the laser printing.
The Designer section is divided into two parts:
– Available fields contain elements that you can use when designing labels, while the Zoom option will only enable you to enlarge the display of labels for the more accurate design of small labels;
– Label sample is the display of a future label (it is initially empty and its dimensions correspond to the dimensions you defined in the Document header).
The design process itself is very simple and it comes down to the Drag and Drop operation of the elements you want to display on the future label.
You can move, resize, resize the font, rotate or delete every single element, while for the barcodes you can change the type (UPC-A, UPC-B, EAN, Codabar, QR, etc.).
After you design the label, click on the SAVE button in order to save the template.
Label Print Layout
To create a Label print layout, you need to activate the menu Administration-Label Print Layout and then activate the CREATE button.
By creating a new Label Print template we can notice that the form is divided into several parts.
In the Document header section, the basic setup is defined as follows:
– Description (which you will need in order to know what Layout you want to print);
– UOM for the unit of measure of paper.
In the Paper size section define the following:
– Size – select the size of the paper (the currently available sizes are Letter and A4);
– Margin (Top, Bottom, Left and Right) – input margins of the paper.
In the Cell Size section define:
– Width of individual stickers;
– Height of individual stickers;
– Columns – the number of columns on paper;
– Rows – the number of rows on paper.
Any changes you make to any field in the Paper Size and Cell Size section will be displayed in the Preview section where you will immediately see the result of your setting.
After setting, record the changes by clicking on the Save button.
Product Setup
After creating one or more Label Templates, we need to indicate which label we will use for each item. Different products can share the same Label Template or can also have special ones. Also, it is very important that each Label template is bound to a Barcode of the item, so that items that do not have a barcode cannot have a Label Template. Activate Inventory – Products and Services from the main menu. Create a new Product or activate an existing one.
In the Barcode / Second UOM section, select or enter a new barcode, and in the Label template option, select a template that suits you. With Label printing option, you choose whether the labels will print Per quantity or Single label.
After completing the settings, record the changes.
Printing labels
You can print labels from the Purchase Order when the items are received, or from the Inventory / Stock list where you can create a filter and print only the filtered products and from the Work Order where labels are printable when Deliver finished goods is completed.
In this example, we will display a printout from the Purchase Order.
Create a new Purchase Order and Receive the items to your stock. Click on the Label Printing button and select the appropriate Label Print Layout depending on the paper that is set in your printer.
After choosing Layout, the browser will create a preview. Since different browsers have a different print preview engine, there is a possibility of deviation from the specified dimensions of the Label Print Layout. In this case, we recommend using the Chrome browser because the error in the resulting preview is minimal or does not exist.
So, in Chrome print previewer, you need to select the appropriate Paper Size and set the Margins to NONE.
Since the dimension of a single Label Layout does not always have to be identical to the space defined in the Label Print Layout, ERPAG will perform dimensional corrections in the following way:
– If the size of a single Label Layout is greater than the space defined in the Label Print Layout, the individual labels will be proportionally reduced to the space defined in the Label Print Layout;
– If the Label Layout dimension is smaller than the space defined in the Label Print Layout, the individual labels will retain their dimension in the space defined in the Label Print Layout.
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