Barcode scanning can save you a lot of time. That is what Joel Spolsky found out when he decided to ship his own DVD’s:
Barcodes are the greatest thing since sliced bread. I didn’t think we’d need a barcode because all we had to type was an eight digit order ID. Lo and behold, typing an eight digit order ID three thousand times adds up. The three day ordeal would have been a two day ordeal if we had thought to put barcodes on the packing slip and had a scanner to read it.
Scanning barcodes is the fastest and most accurate way to sell products at the Point Of Sale.
Of course barcodes are commonly used in the warehouse as well: you make stock counts of your inventory by scanning barcodes with a Portable Data Terminal, you scan the barcodes of all items you receive from your supplier and of all items you prepare for shipping to your customers as Joel Spolsky was doing. Some big warehouses have replaced barcodes with RFID labels, but this technology is generally more expensive than barcodes.