Designing a layout
Building a label layout: sheet or roll, grid, margins, fonts, barcode symbology and what prints on the label.
The whole module comes down to describing a piece of paper accurately. This is how to do it in about ten minutes, including the test print.
What to measure
Take one sheet of your labels and a ruler with millimetres on it.
| You need | How to measure it |
|---|---|
| Columns and Rows | Count them. |
| Left/right margin | From the paper edge to the first label's edge. Measure the left; label sheets are symmetrical. |
| Top/bottom margin | From the paper's top edge to the first row's top edge. |
| Horizontal gap | Between two labels in the same row. Often 2–3 mm; sometimes 0. |
| Vertical gap | Between two rows. Very often 0 on address-label sheets. |
Two shortcuts that save arithmetic:
- The manufacturer's datasheet has all of these. Search the part number printed on the box.
- Measuring across the whole sheet and dividing is more accurate than measuring one label. If ten rows span 250 mm, each row is 25 mm — measuring one row and multiplying magnifies your error tenfold.
Entering it
Labels → Configuration → Label Templates → New.
The module has its own top-level Labels menu rather than sitting under Inventory's or Sales' configuration, because it depends on product alone and those menus belong to apps you may not have installed.
Fill in the grid and margins. As you type, the blue box tells you the resulting label size in millimetres. Compare that number with the label on your desk. If the module says 70.0 × 34.6 mm and your labels are 70 × 35 mm, you are within tolerance. If it says 63 mm, something is wrong — usually a margin.
The form refuses to save a grid that cannot fit on the page at all. That catches gross errors, not a millimetre of drift, which is what the test print is for.
The test print
Press Print a Test Sheet. You get one full page using a real product.
Print it on plain paper, at 100% scale — not "fit to page", which most print dialogs default to and which shrinks everything by about 4%. Then hold it against a sheet of your labels, up to a window if you have one.
What to look for:
- Does the first label's box sit inside the first label?
- Does the last row still line up? Drift accumulates downwards, so an error in the vertical gap is invisible at the top and obvious at the bottom.
- Does the last column still line up? Same for the horizontal gap.
Adjust and repeat. Two iterations is normal; the second is usually just the top margin.
Roll labels
Choose Continuous roll and give the label's width and height. Each label becomes its own page, sized to the label, which is what a thermal printer expects. Margins and grids do not apply.
The module creates a paper format matching the size and keeps it in step when you resize the template. In the printer's own settings, choose that paper size (or "use printer's own"), and again turn scaling off.
What to put on it
Space is the constraint, and it is tighter than it looks. Rough guidance:
| Label size | Fits legibly |
|---|---|
| 45 × 21 mm | A short name and a barcode. Nothing else. |
| 70 × 35 mm | Name, reference, barcode with its number. |
| 99 × 38 mm | The above plus a price at a readable size. |
| 100 × 50 mm | Everything, including variant attributes. |
A barcode needs about 8–10 mm of height to scan reliably at speed, and it needs white space either side — the module leaves a small quiet zone, but a barcode crammed edge-to-edge on a narrow label will read slowly or not at all.
If the content overflows, it is clipped rather than pushed onto the next label. Turn something off or make the label bigger; there is no font size at which four lines fit on 21 mm.
Barcode type
Leave it on Automatic unless you know otherwise. Automatic prints EAN-13 when the product's barcode really is thirteen digits, and Code 128 for everything else — internal references, alphanumeric codes, short numbers.
Forcing EAN-13 on a code that is not a valid EAN-13 produces a blank image on every label, and it is not obvious on screen until you look closely.
QR is worth considering for very small labels: it stays scannable at sizes where a linear barcode does not.
Prices
Ticking Sales Price prints the product's own sales price. Setting Price From to a pricelist prints that pricelist's price instead.
That is how you get two sets of labels from the same products: one template with no pricelist for retail, one pointing at your trade pricelist for the trade counter.
Keeping it maintainable
Put the stationery's manufacturer part number in the Notes field. In eighteen months, when the labels run out and somebody has to reorder them, that one line saves an afternoon.