Selling to Coles & Woolworths: GS1 barcode, SSCC pallet label & ASN requirements explained

If you want your product on a Coles or Woolworths shelf, the hard part is not the buyer meeting. It is everything that happens after the purchase order: the way you label, pack and electronically tell the grocer what is arriving. Australia's major retailers run high-volume distribution centres that cannot afford to manually inspect and key in every delivery, so they push the data and labelling work back onto suppliers. Get the GS1 barcodes, the SSCC pallet labels and the ASN right and your stock flows through receiving cleanly. Get them wrong and you face rejections, chargebacks and a buyer who stops returning calls.

This guide explains the GS1 barcode requirements for Woolworths, Coles and other major Australian suppliers in plain language: what each barcode is, where it goes, how EDI and the electronic Despatch Advice fit together, and the software that turns all of it into a few clicks instead of a compliance headache. It sticks to the stable, well-established facts. Always confirm the exact specifications with each retailer's current supplier portal, because thresholds and formats are reviewed periodically.

Why EDI is effectively the price of entry

EDI, electronic data interchange, is the structured exchange of business documents, purchase orders, despatch advices, invoices, between trading partners' systems without anyone re-typing them. For the major Australian grocery and hardware retailers, trading by EDI is not a nice-to-have. It is a baseline requirement to onboard as a supplier.

• Coles, Woolworths, Metcash and Bunnings all run on EDI for the core document flow. A buyer issues a purchase order electronically, expects an electronic despatch advice back before goods arrive, and reconciles an electronic invoice afterwards.
• The point of EDI is speed and accuracy at scale. A national DC receiving thousands of pallets a day cannot have staff reading paper dockets. The data has to arrive ahead of the truck, already structured.
• Most suppliers connect through an EDI provider or a VAN (value-added network) that translates between their system and the retailer's format, so you do not have to build a raw EDI stack yourself.

The practical takeaway is that barcoding and EDI are two halves of the same requirement. The barcodes identify the physical goods; the EDI messages describe them electronically. The retailer's DC matches one against the other at the dock. If either half is missing or wrong, the delivery stalls.

GS1 and the numbers that identify your products

Everything starts with GS1. GS1 is the global, not-for-profit standards body that issues the company prefixes underpinning barcodes worldwide, and GS1 Australia administers them locally. To trade with the majors you need a GS1 company prefix, because that is what makes your product numbers globally unique rather than something you invented.

• The GTIN (Global Trade Item Number) is the number that identifies a single sellable product, the consumer unit a shopper picks off the shelf. It is what the supermarket scans at the checkout.
• A GTIN is built from your GS1 company prefix plus an item reference and a check digit. You allocate a distinct GTIN to each distinct product variant: a different size, flavour or pack count is a different GTIN.
• The same GTIN must mean the same product everywhere. Reusing or recycling numbers, or guessing at them, is how you end up with mismatches at the DC and at the till.

Get the GTIN allocation right first. Every barcode further up the packaging hierarchy, the carton and the pallet, builds on these foundations.

The packaging hierarchy: consumer unit, carton, pallet

Retailers think about your stock in three layers, and each layer carries its own identifier and barcode.

• The consumer unit (each): the individual retail item, carrying a GTIN encoded in a retail barcode (typically EAN-13) so it scans at the checkout.
• The trade unit or carton (case): the box the consumer units ship in, which gets its own GTIN. On a carton, that GTIN is commonly encoded as an ITF-14 barcode, the chunky interleaved 2-of-5 symbol designed to print and scan reliably on corrugated fibreboard.
• The logistics unit (pallet): the full pallet built for the DC, identified by an SSCC and labelled with a GS1-128 logistics label. The SSCC is the single number that lets the whole pallet be tracked and received as one unit.

Defining this hierarchy cleanly, how many eaches in a carton, how many cartons on a layer, how many layers on a pallet, is the data backbone the retailer's systems expect. It also drives your own picking and despatch logic.

GTIN, ITF-14 and GS1-128: which barcode goes where

The single biggest source of confusion is which symbology belongs on which packaging level. Here is the stable rule of thumb the majors work to.

• On the consumer unit: a retail point-of-sale barcode (EAN-13 in most of Australia) encoding the product GTIN. This is the only barcode designed to be scanned at a checkout lane.
• On the carton or case: an ITF-14 barcode encoding the carton GTIN. ITF-14 is robust enough to survive printing directly onto cardboard. Some supply chains use a GS1-128 on the carton instead when additional data such as a batch or use-by date is required.
• On the pallet: a GS1-128 logistics label carrying the SSCC, plus human-readable text and often application identifiers for content, quantity, batch and best-before where the retailer asks for them. GS1-128 (formerly UCC/EAN-128) uses application identifiers (AIs) to flag exactly what each data field means.

Two practical rules save most of the grief. First, never put a retail EAN-13 where a logistics barcode belongs, or vice versa; the scanners and processes are different. Second, print and verify at the right size and quality, because a barcode that will not scan first time is, for a DC, the same as no barcode at all.

The SSCC: one number per pallet

The SSCC, the Serial Shipping Container Code, is the heart of efficient pallet receiving. It is an 18-digit number, built from your GS1 company prefix plus a serial reference and a check digit, that uniquely identifies one logistics unit, usually a pallet, anywhere in the world.

• Every pallet you despatch gets its own unique SSCC. It is serial, not a product code: two identical pallets of the same product still carry two different SSCCs.
• The SSCC is printed on the GS1-128 pallet label and encoded in the barcode using application identifier (00). The label also shows human-readable detail so a forklift operator can read it without a scanner.
• Because the SSCC is unique, it becomes the key that links the physical pallet to the electronic message describing what is on it. Scan the SSCC and the receiving system instantly knows the expected contents.

That linkage is the entire reason the SSCC exists. Without it, a DC has to open and count pallets. With it, a single scan reconciles a whole logistics unit against the data the supplier already sent.

The ASN / Despatch Advice matched to the SSCC at the DC

The ASN, the advance shipping notice, known in EDI terms as the Despatch Advice (the EDIFACT DESADV message), is the electronic document you send the moment goods leave your dock, before the truck arrives. It tells the retailer exactly what is coming and how it is packed.

• The Despatch Advice carries the hierarchy: which GTINs, in what quantities, packed into which cartons, on which pallets, each pallet keyed by its SSCC.
• When the truck arrives, the DC scans the SSCC on each pallet's GS1-128 label and the receiving system pulls up the matching line from the ASN. If they agree, the pallet is received in one scan. This is often called SSCC-based or scan-to-receive putaway.
• If the scanned SSCC does not match an expected one, or the ASN never arrived, the pallet falls out to manual handling, which is slow, costly and frequently passed back to the supplier as a chargeback.

This is why the ASN and the SSCC are inseparable. The SSCC is the physical key; the ASN is the lock it opens. Send an accurate Despatch Advice and label every pallet with a correct, unique SSCC, and your stock moves through receiving without a human touching it. That speed is exactly what the majors are optimising for.

GS1 verification and label quality

A barcode that does not scan cleanly on the first attempt is a defect, and the majors treat it as one. GS1 verification is the discipline of checking that your barcodes and labels actually meet specification before they leave your site.

• Verify the print quality (the scan grade), the dimensions, the quiet zones (the clear space around the bars) and the human-readable text against the GS1 General Specifications and the retailer's own label guide.
• GS1 Australia and accredited providers offer barcode verification and pre-press checks; using them before your first delivery is far cheaper than discovering a problem at a Coles or Woolworths DC.
• Common failures are simple and avoidable: too-small ITF-14 on a flexible carton, a damaged or smudged thermal pallet label, missing quiet zones, or a duplicate (non-unique) SSCC. Each one can stall a delivery.

Treat verification as part of go-live, not an afterthought. The first delivery that scans cleanly end to end is what earns you a reputation as an easy supplier to deal with.

The software that automates GS1, SSCC and ASN

Almost none of this needs to be manual. The reason suppliers dread Coles and Woolworths compliance is usually that they are trying to do it with spreadsheets, a label template and a lot of hope. The right operations system generates the identifiers, prints compliant labels and emits the ASN automatically as part of the despatch workflow.

• Maintain a clean product catalogue with GTINs allocated at each packaging level, so the carton and pallet identifiers are derived correctly rather than typed by hand.
• Allocate a unique SSCC to every pallet automatically at pack-out, and print the GS1-128 logistics label from the same step, so the number on the label is guaranteed to match the number in the system.
• Build the despatch as you pack, capturing which GTINs and cartons went onto which SSCC pallet, then generate the Despatch Advice (ASN) from that exact pick-and-pack record. The electronic message and the physical pallet come from one source of truth, so they cannot drift apart.
• Send the ASN through your EDI provider in the retailer's required format, and reconcile the purchase order, despatch and invoice in one flow.

The payoff is that compliance stops being a special project and becomes a side effect of packing the order properly. That is the difference between scaling into the majors and being scared of them. For more on the broader supply scenario, see /solutions/wholesale-distribution.

A practical supplier-readiness checklist

Before your first delivery to a major retailer, work through this list.

• Hold a current GS1 company prefix and allocate a unique GTIN to every product variant and every packaging level (each, carton, pallet).
• Confirm the correct barcode symbology per level: retail EAN-13 on the consumer unit, ITF-14 (or GS1-128 where batch/date is needed) on the carton, GS1-128 with the SSCC on the pallet.
• Generate a unique SSCC for every pallet and print a compliant GS1-128 logistics label, then verify scan grade, dimensions and quiet zones.
• Stand up your EDI connection (usually via a provider) to receive purchase orders and send the Despatch Advice and invoice in the retailer's format.
• Make sure the ASN you send mirrors the physical pallets exactly, SSCC by SSCC, so the DC can scan-to-receive.
• Always check each retailer's current supplier portal for the live specification, because formats and thresholds are reviewed over time.

Tick all of these and your onboarding becomes a formality rather than a fire drill.

How OpsUI fits

Supplying the majors is the disciplined, high-volume work OpsUI is built to run: it makes the GS1 hierarchy, the SSCC and the ASN a side effect of packing the order properly. You keep your finance system, Xero, MYOB or NetSuite, and add OpsUI as the operations layer that handles the warehouse, the despatch and the retailer compliance underneath it.

• The Inventory Management module holds a clean product catalogue with GTINs across the packaging hierarchy, so your carton and pallet identifiers are correct by construction.
• The Shipping and Outbound module allocates a unique SSCC to each pallet at pack-out, prints the GS1-128 logistics label, and builds the despatch record that the ASN is generated from, so the label and the electronic message always agree.
• The Receiving and Inbound and Quality Control modules give you the same scan-driven discipline on the way in, so the accuracy you owe your customers is matched by the accuracy you demand from your own suppliers.
• Bidirectional NetSuite sync is live in production today; bidirectional Xero and MYOB sync is wired during rollout via the Finance and Accounting module, so your purchase orders, despatches and invoices reconcile back to the ledger without re-keying.

Flat modular pricing from A$399/module/mo — full breakdown at /pricing, so you buy the operations capability you need to supply the majors and nothing you do not. Read /solutions/wholesale-distribution for the supply scenario, and when you are ready, book a walkthrough at /book-demo and we will show you the despatch and ASN workflow end to end.

This article is general information about GS1 barcode and supplier requirements in Australia. Always confirm the current specifications with GS1 Australia and each retailer's own supplier portal before your first delivery.