Information stored about plants is what puts the word 'botanic' into our institute's name. Curators and garden staff are obliged to record and maintain considerably more information about their accessions than they once did. At the same time, the demands on staff time have never been greater. Traditional practices in data collection (writing lists) are extremely time consuming and prone to transcription errors. In addition, many institutes hold a great wealth of plant diversity. The National Botanic Garden of Belgium (NBGB), is no exception, its holds c.25,000 accessions (stock items), each with potentially an enormous amount of associated data. Supermarkets also contain a vast and diverse array of stock items that constantly change in number. They rise to this challenge by managing their stock by using databases for which bar-code technology is an important tool. In the same way, the NBGB has recently initiated this practice, making it possible to collect data in a fraction of the time it once took. The practical use of bar-coding have only currently been fully integrated in a single collection (wild Phaseoleae). The challenge is now to integrate this methodology into the rest of the collections and to fully utilise its potential