Advice from those business-owners-Inventory

sparkie · Oct 23, 2016

So rather than find a job at a local factory, I'm teaming up with a master electrician and we are going into business together. I'm going to get my master's license out of the deal too, so I have no problem doing my time while I work on an EE degree.

He wants me to handle the "management" side of the business, which will include invoicing, shaking trees to see what controls work falls out, inventory management and the technology side of the business. Of course, I go help with bigger jobs (mostly building panels and terminating), gathering materials, etc.

We are going from nothing other than a steady supply of work and it is my challenge to streamline this process so we can spend less time on that side of the business and more time generating income. We are currently using quick books online, but the inventory feature is not very good.

What software do you guys use to manage inventory for consumables such as receptacles, fittings, pipe, wire, etc that are commonly needed on service calls / jobs across multiple vehicles and storage locations? I was hoping to find a quick books addon for that, but we may have to purchase additional software.

rstech · Oct 23, 2016

I use QuickBooks as well, the desktop version set to the Contractor Edition, and I agree, the inventory feature does not work well at all. I'm interested to see what other people suggest in your post.

bright676 · Oct 23, 2016

What about SAP?

GaryS · Oct 23, 2016

SAP is large and very expensive and you will have a long learning curve

don't stock any inventory if that's possible the manufacturer don't keep inventory on the self and they have bigger pockets then you. and don't forget you will have to pay taxes on any inventory you have on the shelf on the rollover date.

payroll will be the biggest headache, payroll must be paid before anything else
hire a CPA to keep an eye on the book
I could go on and on but that highlights

sparkie · Oct 23, 2016

GaryS said:
SAP is large and very expensive and you will have a long learning curve

don't stock any inventory if that's possible the manufacturer don't keep inventory on the self and they have bigger pockets then you. and don't forget you will have to pay taxes on any inventory you have on the shelf on the rollover date.

payroll will be the biggest headache, payroll must be paid before anything else
hire a CPA to keep an eye on the book
I could go on and on but that highlights

I'm looking for something a little lighter and cheaper than SAP. I don't need a huge amount of features. Quickbooks handles all the payroll stuff. We will end up hiring an accountant to set it all up too.

As far as inventory, we can't go to the store every time we need a new receptacle. We are doing a lot of residential work at the moment, so we do have to have some items on hand.

jrv5207 · Oct 23, 2016

You could make an excel workbook. Keep track of all inventory items. Make a sheet that allows you to put how many items of each consumable that you use for the job, like a bill of materials. Then the quantity of these items would subtract from your inventory stock.

sparkie · Oct 23, 2016

jrv5207 said:
You could make an excel workbook. Keep track of all inventory items. Make a sheet that allows you to put how many items of each consumable that you use for the job, like a bill of materials. Then the quantity of these items would subtract from your inventory stock.

I could just as easily make a database and a simple VB frontend to that database to do this, but I was hoping to avoid reinventing the wheel if at all possible.

kamenges · Oct 24, 2016

Originally posted by sparkie:

...I was hoping to avoid reinventing the wheel...

has got to be the most overused and misapplied phrase in the english language.
Leibniz and Newton re-invented each other's wheel. As soon as you said:

Originally posted by sparkie:

I could just as easily make...

you transitioned from re-inventing a wheel to making a wheel of a custom size. You aren't doing anything new or novel. You are just customizing a concept (one you know how to do already, by all indications) to your specific needs.

So the question is, do you continue to search all the shops looking for a wheel the size you want and invariably find a bunch of wheels that are WAY bigger than you want to deal with or do you just make your own wheel the size you want? One is a gamble with a possible big pay-off in time the other is a certainty with a time penalty but a known capability and availability.

If you are confident enough in your ability to make a database app that does exactly what you want it to do I suggest you just do it. It is very likely you will burn a bunch of time looking for something to your liking that just isn't there and end up making your own application anyway. And who knows? You may be able to use the app you develop as an advertising tool to show potential customers what you are capable of.

Keith

ktmtragic · Oct 24, 2016

Try Xero has some great import functions an add ons Quickbooks is a PIA

sparkie · Oct 24, 2016

kamenges said:
has got to be the most overused and misapplied phrase in the english language.
Leibniz and Newton re-invented each other's wheel. As soon as you said:

you transitioned from re-inventing a wheel to making a wheel of a custom size. You aren't doing anything new or novel. You are just customizing a concept (one you know how to do already, by all indications) to your specific needs.

So the question is, do you continue to search all the shops looking for a wheel the size you want and invariably find a bunch of wheels that are WAY bigger than you want to deal with or do you just make your own wheel the size you want? One is a gamble with a possible big pay-off in time the other is a certainty with a time penalty but a known capability and availability.

If you are confident enough in your ability to make a database app that does exactly what you want it to do I suggest you just do it. It is very likely you will burn a bunch of time looking for something to your liking that just isn't there and end up making your own application anyway. And who knows? You may be able to use the app you develop as an advertising tool to show potential customers what you are capable of.

Keith

That is the thing, I'm not looking for a "custom one-sized fits all" software package, I'm looking for a software package that does about what I need that doesn't cost several thousand dollars a year.

Somewhere, in this huge world-wide-web sits a page that has a hyperlink on it to what I'm looking for. Until then I'll keep this thread open and see if anyone has any suggestions as to a software package. I would rather lose a week and potentially find what I'm looking for at a reasonable rate than spend a month of my free time developing what I need if I can avoid it. If I lose a week, then so be it and I'll do what I need to, but something tells me I won't have to.

kamenges · Oct 24, 2016

Originally posted by sparkie:

Somewhere, in this huge world-wide-web sits a page that has a hyperlink on it to what I'm looking for.

Quite possibly.

Originally posted by sparkie:

If I lose a week, then so be it and I'll do what I need to, but something tells me I won't have to.

I'll be interested to see if that is the case. I just think you are looking for something so specific (a "lite" version of something only bigger players usually purchase) that it will be real hard to find. Have you tried asking over at Mike Holt's site? That is geared more toward the contractor type that would use this.

Keith

Aabeck · Oct 24, 2016

This would be perfect for Microsoft Access, if it is part of your Office package. I started an inventory using Access many years ago, until I decided I didn't need it. I remember it was easy to set up each item with my part #, vendor, vendor part #, Minn Qty to reorder at, reorder Qty, prices and many other fields can be added.

I just did a search for Access clones and got a lot of hits, some may be free like the Office clone from WPS (but they don't have access) Plus Access is available for purchase and to use as an online tool.

sparkie · Oct 24, 2016

I just realized how unspecific I was being. I guess I should get a bit better at communicating my thoughts. The reason I'm looking at software packages would be future functionality. I was wanting to see if there was anything out there that meets our needs. I'm wanting a cloud-based system if possible. This kind of offsets our need to run any form of server, as I would rather not spend the time maintaining the hardware.

The other advantage of a cloud-based system is that it is mobile. We are wanting to eliminate as much paper as possible from the get-go. That is what really makes what we are looking for cost-effective. We are looking at add-ons for quickbooks. I see some nice add-ons for Xero too and we may end up switching to Xero because of this.

Really I just wanted to see if anyone on here had found a good system for a decent price. We will be running off of two tablets and two laptops at the moment. Adding those ideas really changes things up though, so sorry about that.

Mill_Control · Oct 24, 2016

Unmanaged inventory tracking usually fails once you throw busy/lazy/forgetful humans into the mix. Your time would be better spent making re-ordering as streamlined as possible.

24/7 re-ordering is also a big plus because you'll be busy during your vendors office hours.

isiah_s · Oct 24, 2016

sparkie said:
I could just as easily make a database and a simple VB frontend to that database to do this, but I was hoping to avoid reinventing the wheel if at all possible.

Do not re-invent the wheel. Find something and use it. Check to see if there are any web-based ones these days. Be a different story if you were a large company and could spend the time on this. If you can not find anything online use SQL with no gui.

Advice from those business-owners-Inventory

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