Turtlerock Forum

Hey all,

Wondering if anyone has a really awesome solution for managing and tracking inventory?

At the moment I'm using an excel spreadsheet to track about 25 edit suites worth of gear, but it's really clunky, and I'd love to find a better solution.

Has anyone got/used a great database solution that will make tracking mobile assets easier? Ideally, something with an iPhone app that can be used as a Barcode scanner - all our inventory is barcoded.

What i'd love to do is walk into a room, scan a "room code" - like a QR code on the wall with an iPhone app, then scan QR codes for all the equipment in the room, then when that room is complete, "complete/finalise" that room, and move onto the next one. Oh, and it would be great if it could be web based, cause our sites are all over the place. Anyone seen or used anything like this?

I have not - but I would love to know if you find something.

I suspect a custom database job would be the best solution, although there are heaps of generic inventory programs out there. I have just started using Ninox - it involves a little basic programming but I have found it relatively easy to work my way into it, and it has a cloud functionality available. I think it has an inventory database you can download pre-programmed as well.

But with all such things, you need to plan it all on paper before hand. From what you describe, you have -

ITEMS
consisting of name, possible a type field, asset number (the barcode), and location

LOCATIONS
consisting of location number and description.

You then have a many to one relationship between the items and the locations. Is that really all you want? The data entry thing you describe is fairly straightforward but what then? How do you intend to log items in or out of locations? If you don't keep it up to date all you know is where an item was when last logged, not where it is now, and that's a workflow discipline rather than a software ( unless you want to add tracking chips to every item, which actually has not as expensive as you might think!).

Are you running Office 365? If so, then Access is a simple database and you can have your data cloud-based so it's accessible anywhere from a browser. You'd have to create the database - could have one field that is input from a bar code reader.... sounds like my day to day job - not much fun at all.....