Print Shopify Barcode Labels When Your Products Have No Barcode Yet

LabelCraft - barcode labels for Shopify that print at exactly the size you set.

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The guarantees behind every label

Exact to ±0.1 mm

Every label prints at the size you set - measured, not approximate.

Never a silent failure

Overflow or a missing barcode always raises a visible warning before you print.

Whole-dot barcodes

Modules snap to your printer's dots, so codes stay crisp and scan first time.

Your barcodes, untouched

We never overwrite or reassign a product's existing barcode.

A brand-new Shopify catalog usually has no barcodes at all — just product names, SKUs and prices. That's the single biggest wall to printing scannable labels, but you do not need to buy barcodes to get past it. This guide shows how LabelCraft gives every product a scannable value and prints labels that scan, starting from zero.

Do you actually need to buy a barcode?

For selling and labelling in your own store — scanning at the till, in receiving, on the shelf — you do not need a globally unique GTIN at all. Any value your scanner can read works. You only need a real, purchased GTIN when an outside channel demands one (Amazon, Walmart, Google Shopping, or a retailer you wholesale to). For everything inside Shopify and your own four walls, a self-assigned code is enough.

SKU and barcode are not the same thing

A SKU is your internal code — letters and numbers you choose to track a variant. A barcode is the scannable value encoded into the bars. Shopify stores them in two separate fields, and a SKU is not automatically scannable. So a catalog full of SKUs but empty barcode fields still has nothing to scan — until you put a value in the barcode field, which is exactly what the next step does.

Generate a barcode for every variant that's missing one

Open Barcode check in LabelCraft and run Generate missing barcodes. It finds every variant with an empty barcode and proposes a value — you preview the whole list as a dry run before anything is written, and it never overwrites a barcode you already have. You get two honest options:

A real GTIN-13 — if you own a GS1 company prefix, enter it in Settings and LabelCraft builds valid retail GTIN-13s (prefix + sequence + correct check digit) you can use on any marketplace.
An internal-use Code 128 — with no prefix, LabelCraft assigns each variant a unique internal value, clearly marked internal-use-only. Perfect for in-store scanning, never to be passed off as a real GTIN.

Step by step: from no barcodes to printed labels

In LabelCraft, open Barcode check. It lists every variant and flags the ones with no barcode.
(Optional) If you own a GS1 prefix, add it under Settings first so generation produces real GTIN-13s instead of internal Code 128 values.
Run Generate missing barcodes, review the proposed values in the dry-run preview, then apply — the codes are written back to your Shopify variants.
Go to the print flow, pick the products and a template, and check the scan-readiness warning if any barcode is tight for the label size.
Generate the PDF and print at 100% / Actual size so the bars keep their exact width.

Throughout, LabelCraft never prints blind: a variant that still has no barcode value is named in a warning before the PDF downloads, so you never discover a blank gap on the roll at the shelf. A code too small to scan at your label size is flagged the same way.

Troubleshooting

I generated barcodes but a few products still show none

Generation skips variants it can't safely code — for example a deleted variant, or one whose existing barcode is valid and must not be overwritten. Re-run Barcode check: anything still flagged is listed by name so you can fix it directly.

Is an internal Code 128 a "real" barcode?

Yes — it is a fully scannable Code 128 symbol; any scanner reads it. It is simply not a globally unique GTIN, so don't submit it to Amazon or a retailer that requires GS1 numbers. For in-store use it is exactly right. To go cross-channel later, buy a GS1 prefix and re-generate as GTIN-13s. See the bulk barcode guide for doing this across a large catalog.

Install free — 200 labels per month →

Want the difference spelled out? Read SKU vs barcode in Shopify, or the bulk barcode guide — or contact LabelCraft support.