Bulk GS1 Digital Link Generator

Pasting from Excel, CSV, or your PIM

The textarea at the top of this page accepts three input shapes, auto-detected on every keystroke. There’s no tab-switching, file picker or format selector — the tool inspects what you paste and figures out the rest.

Newline list

Paste one GTIN per line with no other columns. The tool builds a plain /01/{gtin}Digital Link for each row. Useful when you want a resolver URL per product and haven’t yet decided which qualifiers to encode.

Tab-separated (Excel paste)

Copy a range of cells from Excel, Google Sheets or LibreOffice and paste directly — the tool detects the tab delimiter without any configuration. If the first row looks like a header (fields matching things like GTIN, Batch, (10) or Expiry) it’s used to map columns to GS1 Application Identifiers. Otherwise the columns are mapped positionally: the first column is the GTIN, subsequent columns are filled in the order of your currently selected qualifiers.

CSV

Paste the contents of a CSV file. Double-quoted fields are respected, including escaped quotes ("" inside a quoted field), so values containing commas don’t need any special handling. Header-row detection works the same as TSV.

Format detection happens live as you paste. A one-line summary beneath the textarea shows what was detected, the row count, the header row if one exists, and any non-fatal warnings — for example an unrecognised header column or a missing GTIN column. You can watch the results table at the bottom update in real time as you edit.

Setting a custom resolver domain

This is the single most important decision when deploying GS1 Digital Linkin production, and it’s the bulk tool’s unique differentiator.

id.gs1.org is the canonical GS1 reference resolver. It’s useful for testing — paste a Digital Link URL and the reference resolver will tell you whether the brand has registered a real destination for it. But brands do not deploy to id.gs1.org in production. They register their own domain (or subdomain) and run a conformant resolver that redirects each incoming scan to whatever web destination is appropriate: a product page, a batch traceability dashboard, a recall notice, a regional variant, or a consumer-facing experience.

This means three things for anyone rolling out Digital Link at scale.

1. Choose a domain and stick with it

Changing your resolver domain after products are in-market means reprinting labels. Brands typically choose something short and trustworthy — often trace.brand.com, qr.brand.com, or the brand’s main domain with a /01/ path prefix. Whatever you pick, treat it as permanent.

2. Set up DNS and TLS correctly

Your resolver domain must answer over HTTPS with a valid certificate. Consumers scanning a Digital Link with their phone will see a browser warning if the certificate is invalid, which kills conversion instantly. If you’re using a CDN or edge service, make sure the Digital Link path (starting with /01/) is routed correctly to the resolver. Test from a real phone on a real cellular connection — not just from an internal network where DNS quirks can mask problems.

3. Implement the resolver behaviour

A GS1-conformant resolver parses the incoming path, identifies the primary key (usually a GTIN), looks up the destination in your back-office system and returns an HTTP redirect. It should also support content negotiation — a scanner requesting JSON via Accept: application/json should receive structured data instead of a redirect. Reference implementations in several languages are available from the GS1 community.

The bulk tool’s “Advanced: resolver domain” disclosure lets you preview what your URLs will look like under your chosen domain without touching any infrastructure. Put your domain in the field once and every URL in the results table updates immediately. The value persists across visits so you don’t have to retype it on every session.

Migrating a product catalogue

Rolling out Digital Link across an existing catalogue is a surprisingly linear process if you break it down. The order matters — skipping step 1 is the single most common reason migrations stall halfway through.

Step 1 — Audit your existing GTINs

Before you build any Digital Link URLs, run your master GTIN list through a check digit validator. It’s much cheaper to fix a typo at this stage than after you’ve generated 5000 URLs and printed labels. Any failed row you see here is a data quality signal you can take back to your PIM owner.

Step 2 — Decide on a qualifier strategy

Which qualifiers do you want on each product? Most FMCG brands start with batch and expiry — those two support recall and consumer safety, which are usually the strongest internal business cases. Pharmaceutical and high-value goods add serial. Fashion and variants-heavy categories add consumer product variant (AI 22). Pick the smallest set that serves your goals; you can always add more later.

Step 3 — Structure your PIM data

Your PIM or ERP needs columns for every qualifier you plan to encode. For batch and expiry this usually already exists; for serial you may need a new system-of-record for serial number allocation. Do this work before generating URLs, not after.

Step 4 — Export as CSV or TSV

Pull a report from your PIM with one row per SKU and one column per qualifier. Include a header row with recognisable names — the bulk tool auto-detects headers and maps columns to AI codes for you. Paste the report into the textarea above.

Step 5 — Validate the output

Review the results table. Any errors (red pills) need source-data fixes in the PIM before re-pasting. Aim for a 0% error rate before downloading.

Step 6 — Download and integrate

Use the “Download CSV” button to export a clean file with one row per URL, ready to load into your label design software or feed back into the PIM. For visual proofing or small test runs, use “Download QR ZIP” to get one PNG per SKU, named by source line number so you can cross-reference against your paste.

Step 7 — Proof before print

Always scan a proof of each label with a real phone on a real cellular connection before committing to production print runs. A URL that passes validation in this tool can still fail in the real world if the resolver domain isn’t pointing at a working service.

Qualifier reference

All 12 qualifiers the tool supports, with format rules and example values. Filter by category or search by name to find the right AI for a given data point. Every qualifier shown here is available as a chip in the picker above the bulk input — add the ones you need before pasting.

Production checklist

Before you ship Digital Link-labelled product to retail, work through this list. Each item covers a failure mode that has bitten real migrations — “it built successfully in the tool” is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a print-ready label.

Frequently asked questions