Barcode for What?

When barcodes are just decoration — and how to change that in 3 days.

Imagine this:

A moving truck arrives at a storage facility. Movers unload the boxes and bring them to a warehouse clerk. The clerk scans each label with an app on their phone. The app helps them confirm what’s been received, flags any box that doesn’t belong, and automatically generates a digital report signed by both the warehouse and the driver.

Sounds pretty normal for an age where newborns get a barcode bracelet before they even get a name, right?

In reality? That’s a unicorn.

Boxes are still marked with sharpies or ancient paper tags. Instead of using a real app, the clerk ticks off boxes on a PDF printed from a bingo sheet. Even when there are barcoded labels, they’re often unreadable by the clerk’s scanner — because they were created in some other system.

Now take a look at the image that opened this article. If you see a crew and warehouse staff actually using barcodes, chances are they’re working with Voxme’s Bingo Portal at bingo.voxme.com.

For just $300/year, this portal lets you generate printable barcode labels that actually mean something: they encode both the job number and the item number — and are instantly scannable by the Voxme Digital Bingo app.

At that point, the fantasy scenario becomes real:

• The pickup crew gets labels specific to their job.
• They stick them on the items as they're packed.
• The portal generates a link that the warehouse clerk can open in the app to scan and verify the load.
• The same process can be repeated during delivery, or at any hand-off point in the journey.

Better yet, the system can generate digital inventories when that’s part of the client’s process. It keeps all check-in reports and item lists archived, searchable by job number or client initials — so you’re never stuck digging through folders when claims or audits come up.

The cost? Just $3 per completed job.

Getting started usually takes a couple of days. Most companies order the standard printer + label kit from Levata. Voxme handles setup, trains your staff, connects the printer — and even adds your company’s logo to the label and report, at no extra charge.

So if you’re still drawing squiggles on cardboard with a marker, ask yourself:

Barcode… for what?