Good for a basic inventory system?

[DataDragon]

I was asked to build a simple inventory system in Excel and it's gotten complicated really fast.

This is for a small nonprofit that doesn't have money or a lot of technological resources. The request is for a no-frills inventory control system for donated items coming in and going out.

I haven't yet downloaded ZenCart. My question is whether ZenCart would be appropriate. Might it be overkill? This is basically what's needed:

- 5 clocks are currently in inventory
- Mr Jones donated 1 clock on 13SEP12
- Tony took 4 clocks on 22OC12
- There are 2 clocks currently in inventory
- Lynn can't come in on 1NOV and get 3 clocks because the system knows there are only 2 clocks in inventory

It would be nice to see a report that shows 1 clock was donated in SEP and 4 were taken in OCT

There is no money involved, they would like to stop using paper, have a decent real-time sense of what they have onhand, and know that if they go see Tony, he'd better be able to account for 4 clocks.


All thoughts, warnings, and suggestions will be much appreciated.

[RodG]

All thoughts, warnings, and suggestions will be much appreciated.

Personally I don't think ZenCart is going to be suitable for your needs. Do a google search for 'inventory tracking' and you'll probably find a lot of solutions more suited to your needs.

Cheers
Rod

[DataDragon]

Personally I don't think ZenCart is going to be suitable for your needs. Do a google search for 'inventory tracking' and you'll probably find a lot of solutions more suited to your needs.

Cheers
Rod

RodG, thanks for the reply. Can you say briefly why ZenCart wouldn't be a good solution. I'm just interested in learning about these various solutions that I come across. Thanks again.

[bobdog]

If you have Excel, chances are that you have Access too. I've built a few inventory databases in Access and it works great. Customize reports, track what comes and goes.

There are free templates out there for Access inventory control. Just google it.

[wheat]

You asked why ZenCart would not be good for your project. There are two reasons

1. A shopping cart is not an inventory system
2. It is not set up to track and report the type of data you are requesting.

Many people (I know I did when I first started on-line selling back in the 90's) confuse a shopping cart with an inventory system.

Sorry not to be more immediately helpful

[joejoejoe]

A rather simplistic but effective way to think about it is that an inventory management system - what you are looking for - tracks stock from all your different suppliers, to and through your warehouses, to the shop-floor, and out the door.

Zen Cart is the store. A very small part of ZC does the "out the door" part in that if you tell ZC you have 10 blurrfls and a customer buys five blurrfls, ZC cart is smart enough to know you've only got five left and can warn you you're low on stock and not let a second customer try to buy 10 that you don't have. But ZC doesn't know, or care if you got those 10 original blurrfls from one person or ten, or if you've got a couple more off the books sitting on a shelf somewhere "just in case" or are holding a blurrfl for someone to pick up.

There is software for what you need, and probably one of the free versions will work if you google "free inventory management software"

Good Luck
Joe

[RodG]

RodG, thanks for the reply. Can you say briefly why ZenCart wouldn't be a good solution. I'm just interested in learning about these various solutions that I come across. Thanks again.

Simply put, it's the wrong tool for the job. It doesn't have capability to perform the type of inventory control that you specified you need.

Cheers
Rod