ITF-14 barcode generator

ITF-14 goes on the outer carton, not on the thing inside it. Its fourteen digits are not a number you invent: an indicator digit for the packaging level, the twelve data digits of the retail GTIN packed inside the case, and a check digit calculated again over those thirteen. Take the EAN-13 0012345678905 that is on the bottle, drop its check digit, put a 1 in front for the first level of packaging, and the case code is 10012345678902 — same product, different number, and the last digit is no longer the same one.

Appearance
Size
Caption
Caption position
Caption alignment
Colours

550 × 317 px in the PNG

Size units

Specification

Character set
digits
Length
exactly 14 characters
Check digit
calculated automatically by the encoder

Got a whole list of values rather than one? Generate ITF-14 barcodes in bulk

Where it is used

  • Outer cartons for goods ordered by the case, where the receiving dock scans the box and never opens it
  • Trade item groupings sold on to distributors — a six-pack and a twelve-pack of one product are two items with two codes
  • Direct flexographic printing on corrugated board, where a paper label would not survive the journey and the symbol has to sit on the board itself
  • Mixed pallets read with a handheld from a metre away, where every case has to give up its number on the first pass

How it compares

The two symbols worth comparing it against lose for opposite reasons. Plain Interleaved 2 of 5 will encode any even count of digits, and that is precisely the danger: digits are encoded in pairs, one carried by the bars and the other by the spaces between them, so a beam that clips the start or the end of the symbol can come back with a shorter number that looks entirely valid. ITF-14 shuts that door by fixing the length at fourteen and putting a bearer bar around the symbol, so a partial scan fails instead of lying. GS1-128 loses the other way: it carries far more than a GTIN — batch, expiry date, net weight, serial number, each behind its own application identifier — and the moment the case needs any of that, it is the right symbol and ITF-14 is not. ITF-14 carries the GTIN and nothing else. Pick it when the case is one product and one number, and the surface it prints on is brown and rough.

Common mistakes

  • Carrying the retail check digit across. The case code is not the EAN-13 with a digit bolted onto the front: the retail check digit is discarded, the indicator digit goes on the left, and the check digit is recalculated over the thirteen digits that result — 0012345678905 turns into 10012345678902, and the final digit moves from 5 to 2. There is no need to do that arithmetic by hand: type the indicator plus the twelve data digits and the status line supplies the fourteenth.
  • Ink spread on corrugated board. This is the ITF failure that does not announce itself. Every element in the symbol is either narrow or wide, and the decoder tells them apart purely by width; flexo ink spreading on brown board fattens every bar and thins every space by the same amount, and past a point a wide space starts reading as a narrow one. A reading that goes wrong this way has to clear both the fixed length and the check digit before it can come back as a number at all, so what the line sees is not a wrong number but a case that scans on the third attempt instead of the first. The fix is bar width reduction in the artwork, before the plates are cut, not a setting on the press.
  • Printing a case code at retail dimensions. The X-dimension for ITF-14 runs from 0.495 mm up to 1.016 mm, and the top of that range is where it belongs on corrugated — three times coarser than the 0.33 mm module of an EAN-13 on a bottle. Shrinking the symbol because it looks oversized next to the rest of the print removes the one property the symbology was designed around.
  • Deleting the frame. The bearer bar is not a border somebody added to tidy the layout; it is part of the symbol. It evens out the pressure the flexo plate puts on the edges of the printed area, and it stops a beam crossing the symbol at an angle from beginning or ending in the middle of the code. This generator draws the full frame, and the ten modules of quiet zone between the outermost bar and the frame belong to the symbol as much as the bars do.

Frequently asked questions

Do I type the retail number or the case number?
The case number, all fourteen digits of it. The field will not accept a thirteen-digit EAN-13 and treat it as a case code, because those are two different numbers for two different things — the bottle and the box of bottles — even though both are issued inside the same company prefix.
What is the indicator digit for?
It names the packaging level, and it is the digit on the far left. Values 1 to 8 are yours to assign — you decide that 1 is the inner carton and 2 is the shipper — and 9 marks a variable measure trade item, one sold by weight rather than by count. A leading 0 means something else entirely: it marks a GTIN-13 or GTIN-12 right-justified into a fourteen-digit field, so the number is the base item itself and not a case of it.
Do I need a GS1 prefix for a case code?
Yes, but not a second one. The twelve data digits in the middle of an ITF-14 come out of the same company prefix that issued the retail number for the product inside, so if you already licence a prefix you allocate case codes from it yourself. What you cannot do is invent the digits — a number outside a prefix issued to you may already belong to somebody else, and the receiving system will find their item, not yours.
Can I put an ITF-14 on the consumer pack instead?
No. Checkout systems are looking for a GTIN-13 or GTIN-12 and will not price an item from a case code, and the symbol itself is far too coarse for a retail panel — its narrowest element is three times the width of an EAN-13 module. The consumer unit gets an EAN-13 or a UPC-A; the case it travels in gets the ITF-14.
Why is the symbol so much wider than a retail barcode?
Two reasons, and both are deliberate. Interleaved 2 of 5 spends more space per digit than the retail symbologies do, and ITF-14 is then printed at a much coarser X-dimension so it survives ink spread on board and reads from a distance in a warehouse aisle. A case code is meant to be scanned across a dock, not held under a glass at a till.

This generator draws a valid ITF-14 symbol, but the image alone does not grant the right to sell a product under it in retail. The prefix is issued by GS1 — register it there before printing this code on packaging.