Why

There is two reasons to why we have a barcode system: efficiency and precision. Every retreat we would go through the pain of basically counting everything from scratch and rebuilding our system because different people had different information. By establishing this system, it will allow us to keep counts on everything precisely so we know if anything is missing or needed. It also allows us to avoid spending many hours just counting and tracking what we have. This will allow us to rapidly check things and count what we have.

Barcode Breakdown

Our barcodes are split into 3 parts: the department number, the category number, and the item number. The department number consists of the first 6 digits in the barcode. In this moment, we have 6 departments, but only 4 are active as of May 2025. This means there are 6 different codes for the first part of our complete barcodes. Our category number consists of 4 digits. As of May 2025, there 15 different categories therefore 15 different codes for the category section of our barcodes. Something to keep in mind, however, not all categories will fit in every department. An example is, the speaker category (8748) will never fall under the photo department (736860). Even though we only have 15 categories, we can always add more in the future making this system expandable. Finally, we have the item number which consists of 2 digits, meaning we have 99 total slots per category. This in return gives such a wide range of slots or barcodes to assign item we have. Another thing to note is a barcode does not mean quantity; a barcode only a unique item. Another example can be XLR cables. Although we have a decent quantity of XLR cables, they all come in various lengths making that a unique trait. Therefore, XLR cables have different barcodes depending on their length of cables.

This is the first barcode for Mixed Cables. Mixed is the department, and Cables is the category.

Figuring out the code

These barcodes are essentially based on numbers replacing a pair or trio of letters. This is then put in place of the letters in each department and category abbreviation. This is the

As mentioned above, the department code is 6, category is 4 and item is 2. Specifically in the department codes, there will be 2 departments that have a 0 either at the start or end of the word. This is done because the entire department name is smaller than the required digits. Therefore, we add a 0. Below is the list of departments, their abbreviations, and their descriptions.

For categories, we do not run into the issue of using a 0 to replace a digit. There are 15 categories. Unlike the departments that have specific words, categories are just descriptions that are then abbreviated into a common word or one of the words that best describes all items in the category is chosen and shortened. An example is adtr; this abbreviation stands for adapters, converters, and anything that changes a type of signal or connection into another one. Below will list the categories, their abbreviations, and their descriptions.

Lastly we have the item number. These numbers do not directly tie to anything like the department and category codes. They instead go sequentially from 01 to 99. The item are assigned in no particular order and signify a piece of gear. This allows us to have multiple slots in different categories. For example, the smallest departments are photo, projection, and mixed at the moment. They have 3 categories each. This means that those 3 departments have 297 available slots for gear and items. The biggest department is video with 9 categories, meaning there are 891 slots available for that department. However despite the large capacity, every category will not get filled up, even in the future. It is nice to have that capacity and maybe in the far future we can utilize more.