Sometimes an order is placed against products that have no barcode yet, and you only have the codes once the cartons are open. The receive card lets you record them as you count, so they are saved to the product in Shopify and work everywhere afterwards.
Add a barcode while receiving
Sometimes an order is placed against products that have no barcode yet, and you only have the codes once the cartons are open. When any item on the order is missing one, Add barcodes appears at the top of the receiving card. It lists just those items, so you can scan or type a code for each and then Save barcodes.
If you scan something the order doesn't recognise, the banner that appears also offers Assign to an item. Choose the row the code belongs to, press Use it, and save. The scans that missed are counted onto that item, so you don't have to scan the box a second time.
If the code is not on any product in Stockroom at all, the same banner offers Create product - it creates the product in Shopify with the scanned barcode filled in, adds it to this order, and receives the scanned count in one step. It is created as a draft, so it stays off your sales channels until you finish and activate it in Shopify.
Codes are saved to the product in Shopify, so they work everywhere afterwards - scanning, stocktakes, and printed labels. Three things worth knowing:
Stockroom only fills a barcode that is empty. Changing a code a product already has is an edit in Shopify, deliberately - so a busy receiving session can never overwrite the identity of the wrong item.
If another product already uses the code, Stockroom names it and asks first. You can still Assign anyway when two products genuinely share a code, but a scan will no longer tell them apart.
Typed codes are checked against the digit maths a UPC or EAN has to satisfy, which catches a transposed pair before it reaches your catalog. It is a warning, not a block - internal codes that were never UPCs are fine.
Good to know
For products that have no barcode at all, Stockroom can generate one - see Generate barcodes for products that have none.