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You are here : Business Solutions > Barcoding > Barcoding for PreSort > Barcode Formats

Barcode Formats

Overview

 

There are three types of customer barcode structures, although customer information can only be included in two of these.

 

The fields, number of bars and codes used in a particular barcode depend on the barcode's format. Three barcode formats have been established for customer barcoding, with a fourth format being created for the Reply Paid service.

 

The table below provides a high level summary of each format available to customers, plus the Reply Paid service. It lists the title and code name for each, along with the Format Control Code (FCC) number and the number of bars defined for the barcode format.

 

Barcode Format  FCC No. of bars
Standard Customer Barcode  11  37
Customer Barcode 2  59  52
Customer Barcode 3  62  67
Reply Paid Barcode  45  37

 

Standard Customer Barcode

 

The Standard Customer Barcode is expected to be the most widely-used barcode. Its main purpose is to identify the delivery point for each piece of mail. It does not provide a Customer Information Field, unlike Customer Barcodes 2 and 3.

The Standard Customer Barcode has 37 bars and no bars of customer information and is in the following format:

Bar position Field Code Used No. of bars
 1-2 Start Bars Bars (A&T)  2
 3-6 Format Control Code N Table  4
 7-22 Sorting Code (DPID) N Table  16
 23 Filler Bar Bar T  1
 24-35 Reed Solomon EC Bars Bar to Decimal Conversion Table  12
 36-37 Stop Bars Bars (A&T)  2
 Total Bars      37


Customer Barcode Formats 2 and 3

 

The Customer Barcodes Format 2 and 3 are exactly the same as the Standard Customer Barcode, with the addition of a free-format Customer Information Field. This field contains 16 bars in barcode format 2 and 31 bars in barcode format 3.

 

Customer Barcode Format 2 is 52 bars long with 16 of those being customer information and the overall format as follows:

Bar position Field Code Used No. of bars
 1-2 Start Bars Bars (A&T)  2
 3-6 Format Control Code N Table  4
 7-22 Sorting Code (DPID) N Table  16
 23-38 Customer Information Free Format  16
 39-50 Reed Solomon EC Bars Bar to Decimal Conversion Table  12
 51-52 Stop Bars Bars (A&T)  2
 Total Bars      52


Customer Barcode Format 3 is 67 bars long. Thirty-one of these bars contain customer information. The overall format is as follows:

Bar position Field Code Used No. of bars
 1-2 Start Bars Bars (A&T)  2
 3-6 Format Control Code N Table  4
 7-22 Sorting Code (DPID) N Table  16
 23-38 Customer Information Free Format  31
 39-50 Reed Solomon EC Bars Bar to Decimal Conversion Table  12
 51-52 Stop Bars Bars (A&T)  2
 Total Bars      67

 

Reply Paid Barcode Format

 

Customers who want to offer a Reply Paid service will have the option of printing the Reply Paid Barcode on the response device. The basic format is identical to the Standard Customer Barcode, but a different Format Control Code (FCC) identifies the letter as a Reply Paid letter. The format is as follows:

Bar position Field Code Used No. of bars
 1-2 Start Bars Bars (A&T)  2
 3-6 Format Control Code N Table  4
 7-22 Sorting Code (DPID) N Table  16
 23 Filler Bar Bar T  1
 24-35 Reed Solomon EC Bars Bar to Decimal Conversion Table  12
 36-37 Stop Bars Bars (A&T)  2
 Total Bars      37

 

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