Barcode product entry system used by a cashier

Almost many establishments, shopping Malls, or even a small store need to have product entry system to make it easy for customers to pay their item in the cashier counter. With the help of this system, transactions made easy especially for the benefits of the business because they don’t only compute or analyze manually to determine their revenue and other important matter in every transaction, instead they look only in the system for further information how the system being track each transactions made.

In this tutorial, it only tackles for creating simple barcode entry system used by a cashier using Visual Basic.Net. Obviously, through Visual Basic we can create rapid application in a minute. Unfortunately, will only use to enter each barcode of every item because we don’t have a barcode reader or scanner, just only a simple system to figure out how it will looks our system like as we seen in various malls when we pay our items in cashier counter. For further information, I’ll try to work this simple tutorial to support database for the next tutorial so that every transactions made for each customers and business itself will automatically saves on database and easy to retrieve for analysis.

The concept of this Aka Product Entry System allows the users input item barcode and display the result in DataGridView with the corresponding item description, quantity, price of an item, and total that match to the barcode entered by the user. If the barcode entered does not match to the given barcode, the system display invalid barcode item doesn’t exist. In addition, shortcut keys allow the users quick access all the commands necessary for every transaction made. It provides security account if the user’s mistakes input the number of quantity of an item and only authorized person can modify or delete the items, also includes the additional 12 percent vat. Unfortunately, doesn’t allow printing, not supported by database, only saves on memory and once the program close the data will automatically lost. Furthermore, you can contribute to improve this application if you wish. Hope this is very helpful.

The Barcode Product Entry System looks like the following:

List of Forms and Controls needed to build this application are:

We need to add 4 Forms and name the property name frmProductEntry, frmTotal, frmChange, frmAccount.

frmProductEntry – The main entry of all products to be process, its shows items entry and commands to quick access for users. In this form, in your properties settings, in Text, change the text name to PRODUCT ENTRY: Version 1.0, StartPosition at CenterScreen, FormBorderStyle to FixedSingle, and ControlBox to False. Here are the lists of controls needed in this form:

MenuStrip – includes the following menus, Exit, Functions composed of shortcut keys such as qty F2,  delete F1, edit F2, enter amount F5, print report F4, enter item barcode F6, and select items F7, Settings, About, and Help. Unfortunately, there’s some menus doesn’t functions yet, and images are optional. 

    

DataGridView – to add column name, click datagridview and in small arrow above click it and edit columns… Now, click add button to enable to add column name, by default name Column1 change the name to itemDescription make sure does not includes spacing, Type let it default DataGridViewTextBoxColumn, and Header Text change the name Column1 to Item Description, it allows you used spacing, unlike Name, in column properties only change the Width to 530 . Then followed by Quantity, Price, and Total, all width is 80 and then clicks OK. Again, click the small arrow above in your datagridview and unchecked Enable Adding, Enable Editing, and Enable Deleting.

                

Textbox – add 3 textboxes; name the first textbox to txtbarcode for item barcode, second textbox txtAmount for amount, and the third textbox txtquantity, let 1 the default value.

                

Button – we have various buttons in this form but only have 2 buttons where our code put later, button for accepting items barcode and button for accepting amount. Other buttons show only a shortcut keys to enable the users to quick access all necessary commands to be process. F1 – F7 are only buttons for showing the shortcut keys, codes are place in Function menu not in a button.

                

Label – we have different labels that label our textboxes or buttons, but there’s few labels show the result like the Total, Number of items, Total vat, and Change. The Name property of each labels are follows. Total (lblTotal), Number of Items (lblnumberofitems), Total vat (lbltotalvat), and Change (lblchange)

frmTotal - Display the total amount of an items. In the properties settings, switch the FormBorderStyle to None and StartPosition to CenterScreen. We’re only having 2 labels, TOTAL as label for the total result and lbltotal to displays result. The form looks like the following.

frmChange – Display the Amount Paid and Change. In the properties settings, switch the FormBorderStyle to None and StartPosition to CenterScreen. The form looks like the following.

frmAccount – Only authorize users can access this form is there any mistakes inputs while processing the product entry. In the properties settings, switch the FormBorderStyle to None and StartPosition to CenterScreen. The form looks like the following.

Note: There’s an error while copying the code and paste to its controls if you don’t know how to place each piece of code in a specific controls. For instance, to enable KeyDown click event, you must place the code which control to be click enter so that when the users finish adding entry in textbox it will automatically process. However, if you only have one button to be click after entering data in textboxes, it's better to use accept button. In general, various buttons in one form with different click event, it's better to use Keydown event because it allows the user to place which appropriate command will trigger when the user hit enter. To do so, double click which textbox where the users enter data, after that click the dropdown menu and select KeyDown event, there are various events can be found but stick to the KeyDown event and add your following code.

It looks like the following image if you are going to locate click event.

Source code can download here.

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