Personalised printing online: numbering, QR codes and data from Excel

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With personalised printing at Barwa, you set up numbering, barcodes and QR codes, discount codes or names from a list yourself, in your browser, on your own design. Before we print anything, the studio checks the list for typos and duplicates, and you view a preview of the first and last items. If you prefer, we will set up the personalisation for you and you just approve it.

Print personalisation, or variable data printing, means every item in the print run is different. A voucher has its own number, a ticket its own QR code, a place card the guest’s name. At most printers it works like this: you send the design, a mock-up with the fields marked and a data file, and a member of staff merges them by hand and sends back a PDF for approval. With us you do it yourself, in our own personalisation studio. We built it from scratch, based on orders we used to personalise by hand.

How it works

You will find the ‘Personalisation’ option in the calculators of products where it makes sense, including vouchers, labels and stickers, plastic PET cards and sheet printing. After placing your order you choose one of two routes: online personalisation in the studio, or your own ready files where each item is a separate PDF page.

You upload the base design like any other file. It goes through automated file checking and we apply the personalisation only to the checked file. You can set up the fields beforehand.

Personalisation studio

The studio opens full screen with your design in the background. You add a field with one click, drag it with the mouse and resize it by the corner, and nudge it precisely with the arrow keys in 0.5 mm steps. One design can have up to 20 fields, for example a name, a number and a QR code at once. On double-sided products you set the fields separately on the front and back.

For text you choose one of 16 fonts, the size, alignment and rotation. The colour is black (100% K), and on products with white toner also white. The studio remembers numbering ranges from your previous orders and warns you if the new numbers overlap them.

What you can personalise

Numbering with a prefix

You set the start number, the step, the number of digits with leading zeros, and fixed text before and after the number. The settings ‘SPA-’, 5001 and five digits give the series SPA-05001, SPA-05002 and so on, to the end of the print run. This is how we number vouchers, tickets, coupons, membership cards and pads.

QR codes and barcodes

A code can contain consecutive numbers from a range, values from a list column, or one fixed value on every item. A QR code can link, for example, to an address with the voucher number, so when it is redeemed you know straight away which item was used. You can print the digits under linear barcodes. The studio warns you when a code overlaps another field or extends beyond the page, because a scanner may then fail to read it.

Alphanumeric codes

When you need codes that are hard to guess, for example discount codes or app registration codes, the studio will generate them for you. If you already have codes in your sales system, upload them as a list so that exactly the codes your system recognises are printed.

Data from an XLSX or CSV list

Guest names, employee names, addresses, job titles, table numbers: anything you have in a spreadsheet can go into the fields of your design. The studio reads XLSX, CSV and TXT files (up to 20,000 rows), detects the header and separator on its own, and reads Polish characters even from files saved in older Windows encodings. Each column can go into a different field. If the list has fewer rows than the print run, the missing items will be blank. If it has more, we will skip the extra rows. Either way, the studio tells you straight away.

List checking: typos, duplicates, empty cells

The most common mistake in personalisation is not in the design but in the list. Someone pasted a surname with a double space, typed a zero instead of the letter ‘o’, or added the same person twice. In print you only notice when the place card is on the table. That is why, after you upload the list, the studio reviews every row and shows the entries that look suspicious.

The studio looks for duplicates, extra spaces and unusual capitalisation. It also flags values in a different format from the rest of the column, suspicious characters (for example a digit in the middle of a word), entries that differ from others by one or two letters, and empty cells. We do not correct anything ourselves. ‘Ana’ may be a typo, or it may be a real name, so the decision is always yours.

Preview before printing

First you can generate a test PDF with three items to see quickly how the data fits the fields. When everything fits, you generate the approval preview: the first 10 and last 10 items with real data.

You confirm approval by ticking that you have checked the numbering, data and codes. We then generate the print file with the whole print run. If you change anything in the fields after approval, the design goes back to editing and the preview must be generated again, so nothing you have not seen goes to print.

Would rather not do it yourself?

Choose online personalisation in your order, upload the design and list, then email or call us and describe what you need. A member of our team will set up the fields in the same studio and email you a preview for approval. You check it and click “Approve”. If you approve the preview by replying to the email, they will record it in the order with the date and reason, and you will see this entry in your account.

What to look out for

• The studio catches entries that look suspicious, but it does not know your guest’s real name. A surname misspelt consistently will pass with no notes, so check the list yourself too.
• Check that the address encoded in the QR code works before you approve the preview. We print the code exactly as it appears in the list.
• Place barcodes on a light, plain background, not on a photo, and leave some clear space around them. Scanners need it.
• Leave empty space for the data in the base design. A number placed over text or a pattern will be hard to read.