Advice from those business-owners-Inventory

[just the cowboy]

+1

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.

+1 I have seen a lot of time and money wasted, only to find the part not in stock because someone did not mark they took one. A good clean part system is key, look and order.

 

[Aabeck]

A cloud based clone of MS Access is Zoho Creator. https://www.zoho.com/creator/

Depending on how many records you want they have plans for $5, 10 & 15 per month, with annual discounts

 

[sparkie]

Sounds good guys, and just for the record I am absolutely looking at this from a streamlining perspective. I want us to be able to allocate parts to a job once we receive them in and then have our stocks updated. That is the reason I'm so hesitant to have anything stand-alone. I would rather have that functionality integrated in. For the time and administration costs it would save as a part of a package deal, we are willing to spend a bit more on it.

 

[Phil Buchanan]

You should invest in a package designed for what you are doing. The roll your own approach is going to be more problems than its worth. A word of wisdom please just forget that route.

I would suggest Wintac or esub. Wintac being the best IMHO. It runs your whole business from work orders and change orders to inventory management and quoting and estimating, etc.

It will also integrate with quick books for your payroll and accounting needs.

You won't find one package that does everything the business needs and be top notch in every area it's just does not exist. With Wintac and Quickbooks it should handle anything you will ever need unless you get to be a 3k-5k employee business.

 

[Phil Buchanan]

I would use the Wintac quick-books integration and keep using quick-books for the financials because thats the format an outside CPA would want to work with 99% of the time.

http://myvideo.intacinternational.c...e5955e95|89d135c1-3a60-4a2d-b6f6-81d79d6a4913

 

[mhulbert]

Unless you are keeping a large inventory (big no-no for contractors), it's doubtful that the busy humans grabbing parts are going to update your database. I used to work for an electrical distributor, our entire life was inventory ($2-3M on hand at any one time) and we were constantly fixing errors, as well as the once yearly day where we closed the doors, and counted everything at once. We had dedicated purchasing agents and inside sales people adding/subtracting inventory numbers, still got errors.

So what do you do as a contractor? Do you really need to know that Bob's truck has 7 white CR-20 receptacles that Jack needs today, but Jack is across town so it's quicker to go to the supply house... One method that has worked with some contractors I've worked for that elected to carry significant inventory- the old fashioned ways. Setup shelving and section and label it very well for all the parts you intend to stock. Leave room in each section for future growth as you will find you want to stock more stuff later on. When your guys roll in they can stock their trucks from the shelf. After they head out to the job site, your PA (maybe that's you?) can walk through and note what is low or out, and reorder accordingly. This is not a high tech solution, but compatible with people in a hurry and doesn't require upkeep aside fromwalking your shelves once in a while. Actually, if you get a good outside sales guy from your local wholesale house, they will walk the shelves for you and reorder as needed (subject to your approval).

Just my 2 cents, I've seen a lot of people build complex systems that get misused from day one and don't work for the business...

 

[AustralIan]

Take a look at JIRA.
https://blogs.atlassian.com/2014/03/jira-asset-management-overview/
It is kind of a "configure your own workflow" software, but might suit what you want.

Also change it to what I think it is called Kanban Inventory.
Have two boxes for every part in every vehicle. When box 1 is empty, start picking from box 2 and send box 1 back to base for restocking. Work it out so that you can replenish box 1 before box 2 is empty.
If you are a big enough company relative to your supplier, you can even send the boxes straight to your supplier for refilling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban#Three-bin_system

Also bonus points if you expand JIRA later on.

 

[T Gibbs]

Unless you are keeping a large inventory (big no-no for contractors), it's doubtful that the busy humans grabbing parts are going to update your database. I used to work for an electrical distributor, our entire life was inventory ($2-3M on hand at any one time) and we were constantly fixing errors, as well as the once yearly day where we closed the doors, and counted everything at once. We had dedicated purchasing agents and inside sales people adding/subtracting inventory numbers, still got errors.

So what do you do as a contractor? Do you really need to know that Bob's truck has 7 white CR-20 receptacles that Jack needs today, but Jack is across town so it's quicker to go to the supply house... One method that has worked with some contractors I've worked for that elected to carry significant inventory- the old fashioned ways. Setup shelving and section and label it very well for all the parts you intend to stock. Leave room in each section for future growth as you will find you want to stock more stuff later on. When your guys roll in they can stock their trucks from the shelf. After they head out to the job site, your PA (maybe that's you?) can walk through and note what is low or out, and reorder accordingly. This is not a high tech solution, but compatible with people in a hurry and doesn't require upkeep aside fromwalking your shelves once in a while. Actually, if you get a good outside sales guy from your local wholesale house, they will walk the shelves for you and reorder as needed (subject to your approval).

Just my 2 cents, I've seen a lot of people build complex systems that get misused from day one and don't work for the business...

I'd have to agree with this. I worked for 26 years for a contractor who kept a fair amount of inventory (the place looked like a supply house). We tried numerous ways of keeping track of it and the best was just to have our warehouse manager go and look at the bins each day.

 

[Dravik]

inFlow or Odoo may be of interest to you.