Well, I've been in the retail business for a while now and I have learned that we rely on computers way too much now to go back to writing everything out with a pen on paper and calculators for calculations.

I am looking for any information or suggestions on what I could look for in inventory software. I looked online for some software just for an idea of what is out there and what i might be looking for but it's all so expensive that some of it might not be even worth buying. Most of this stuff is unknown to me as well.

I'm hoping to get something together for organizing all the products that i currently have, showing how much i got, how much i've sold and so on. It's far too difficult and time consuming for paper...my place has lots of paper everywhere already (I don't want any more paper scattered all over the place)

Since this section is about business, i thought inventory stuff would be cool to read about too. I'm sure quite a few of us forum users have had their hands in retail jobs and stuff.

   

I don't know if you are confortable with Linux but there's a lot of great free tools that would do what you want to do.

Take a look on http://www.freshmeat.net/
You should be able to find something. And since there's a lot of software based on PHP/MySQL, you could also use them on a Windows platform !

   

I'm going to agree with Proc here....

Freshmeat.net is a great website resource that has a ton of open-source software.... Most of which is free however... open source just means that if its free, or if you must purchase it, you get the source-code with it, and you may modify it however you wish to best fit your needs. If you PM me with a lil more information about your company and what you sell, I will do my best to try and locate a good software package for you. I'm a business IT Consultant, and I would love to help you out...

Let me know what ya need,
Chris

   

As the potential Canadian immigrant goes after his first work reference in Alberta.............. Good way to go about it. If you don't charge for it you can do all the work up here you want. Volunteers accepted gladly lol.

   

Exroofer

Haha.... I don't mind doing people favors, especially since I know no-one in Canada, I could use all the references I can. So why not help him out, plus... this isn't just my job, or my career, its been a hobby of mine since I was 4... I've lived on a computer, and thus, I enjoy what I do. Not to mention I love saving people money by pointing them towards open-source solutions to all of their IT needs.

Have a good one!

   

Sounds to me like you need a relational database solution. Find a database platform / program in your price range and build your inventory system around that.

If you're going to do it yourself, and you're not too technical a person to start with, perhaps you might want to start with something like MS Access. It's relatively cheap, has tons of educational / do-it-yourself material around, is quite customizable and fully portable (one file databases that can easily be backed up to CD...). There are certainly better solutions out there, but if you want an easy and inexpensive way to get started, MS Access is as good a place to get your feet wet as anywhere else.

One bit of advice for a do-it-yourself database: know how to properly model your data structure. A properly structured relational database has absolutely no redundant data. Read about data-modelling before you start... data design is perhaps the most important step because it is almost impossible to change later, and a poor design can cause endless headaches. Remember, fit your data model to your logical business needs (not a standard shipment / order / inventory form you bought at Business Depot).

If you have really complicated reporting needs, I might also recommend Seagate's Crystal Reports as an excellent reporting program... it can obtain and merge data from multiple ODBC data sources (like Access databases) into reports. Very powerful, once you learn how it works.

One last thing... perhaps the most important. Consider the database user interface seriously. If you have tons of older paper data to input, then some gruelling hours of data entry are unavoidable... but you really want an interface where routine ongoing paper flow (shipments in & sales out) can be entered with ease. To prevent data entry duplication, get a dated stamp, and use it on each piece of paper that has been input into the database. This way, if you have a database failure and you have to restore a backup copy, you know exactly what dated paperwork needs to be re-entered (because transaction date does not necessarily equal data entry date).

I hope this helps.