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What are Application Identifiers (AI)?

Application Identifiers (AI) are used in GS1-128 barcodes, GS1 DataMatrix, and SSCC Pallet Labels to provide added information about your products.

An AI is a prefix, or tag, contained within brackets that precedes a piece of information and indicates the nature, format, and content of the data string following it. AI's can range from 2-4 digits in length and the data that follows can be numeric or alphanumeric and can be fixed or variable in length.

 

Below is a list of common Application Identifiers:

AI Description Data Format
00 SSCC (Serial Shipping Container Code) 18 digits - Fixed

01

 Global Trade Item Number 14 digits - Fixed
02 GTIN of Trade Items Contained in a Logistic Unit* 14 digits - Fixed
10 Batch or Lot Number 1-20 Alphanumeric - Variable
15 Best Before Date 6 digits - (YYMMDD) Fixed
37 Count of Trade Items Contained in a Logistics Unit* 1-8 digits - Variable
400 Customer's Purchase Order number 13 digits - Fixed

*There is a mandatory association between 02 and 37

 

Each Application Identifier has a specific format and will either be predefined (fixed) or non-predefined (variable) in length and contain either numeric or alphanumeric characters. 

 

GS1-128 example-1

Here we see a GS1-128 barcode encoded with a Global Trade Item Number (02), a batch or lot number (10), the count of the trade items contained in the Logistic Unit (370, and the customer's Purchase Order number (400).

 

Best Practice Tip - When adding your AIs, predefined fields, such as the GTIN, should be coded before non-predefined fields. The exception to this is  SSCC which should go at the bottom of your Logistics Label.

 

When you need to use multiple non-predefined length AI's in a row, like in our example where we see (37) followed by (400), it is important to distinguish the beginning and end of each data string by using the FNC1 character as a data separator.

 

You can find the full list of Application Identifiers and more information about the FNC1 in section 3 of the General Specifications.