Scan and Go: three routes to add a record

Scan and Go is how new records enter the Hub. It runs on your phone, on a handheld scanner and in the browser, and it has three routes in. All three end at the same point: one copy in the Hub, with a condition, a price and a quantity of one, ready to publish on every channel.

Route A: scan the barcode

Scan the EAN on the sleeve. If the product is known in our catalogue, the Hub fills in artist, title, year and edition. You add the condition and the price, and you are done. This is the fastest route and the default for anything pressed after the late eighties, when barcodes became standard.

A known barcode does not always come with an image. If it does not, take a photo; that photo becomes the product image for the next shop that scans the same title.

Route B: take a photo, let the AI draft

No barcode, or a barcode the catalogue does not know? Photograph the sleeve. The AI reads what it can see, artist, title and whatever else the sleeve gives away, and fills in a draft. You check it, complete it and confirm. This is the route for everything pressed before barcodes existed, which in an average record shop is a large part of the crates.

Route B costs a small amount of AI processing per record and is billed on use. For crates without barcodes it is worth it; for a thousand titles with barcodes, route A is always cheaper and faster.

Route C: type it in

Without scanner or camera you create the copy yourself, in the app or on the laptop: the same fields, the same destination. Use it for exceptions, corrections, pre-orders and for items that are not records at all, such as merch or accessories.

Catch on the floor, finish at the desk

The app deliberately does little. Scan, photograph, next record. Everything you catch lands in a working stock in the Hub: recorded, not yet published. Later, on a bigger screen, you check the pressing, set the condition and the price, pick the photo and put the copy live. Whoever adds one record can do both in one go; with a batch of two hundred, splitting the two saves the afternoon.

Photos: product image or this copy?

A photo you take can do two things. If the product had no image yet, it becomes the product image, for you and for every other shop on the Hub. And if you choose, it becomes the photo of this particular copy, shown on your storefront with a clear label saying so, because a buyer reads a photo as a promise about the record they will receive. Without that label, the safe assumption for the buyer is that the image is illustrative and says nothing about the condition.

Records without a number

A copy without a usable barcode gets its own number from the Hub. Print it on the label printer, stick it on the sleeve, and from that moment the copy is scannable on the floor, at the fair and at the till. See the guide on the scanner and label printer for the setup.