So in our Vin65/WD world, we have half an inventory system.
I need a system that gives me a way to handle transfer orders between locations, count inventory in an efficient way (eg bar code reader), and somehow periodically sync back up to Vin65 pools.
I have some very kludgey ways figured out to do this stuff, but it is spreadsheet intensive, and not very well suited to training non-technical staff.
Does anyone have a solution to this?
We are working on the same thing right now. I’ll let you know what we come up with. We are looking at apps that we can scan bar codes into excel and then sync it with the Vin65 inventory spreadsheet.
That would be a nice start. About a year ago I found a very simple app that would simply scan a bar code into a text file, as long as you only did 40 at a time before saving and emailing the list to yourself. Any more than that and it might crash and lose your work.
Then after extracting the dozens of lists from emails, and a bunch of munging you could get that into a format to adjust/reset inventory. But unless you were a programmer in another life, you’re not doing it this way…
In another life, many years ago, we had a device that looked like a barcode scanner with a keypad on it.
You would scan an item, and enter a count. At the end of the day you plugged it into a computer and it dumped a csv of sku/qty. It made doing inventory of 6k items a breeze!
I’d love to find one of these again!
@ElJefe I agree we need a proper inventory system. Something that integrates with Vin65’s API would be fantastic, but even just exporting and importing spreadsheets would be better than nothing. Our production office uses an enterprise ERP, and I’m seriously considering using it for inventory management and just exporting spreadsheets on a regular basis.
I don’t mind at all doing that to keep vin65 pools in sync.
It surprises me to no end that there isn’t a phone or tablet app that will do this simple thing. I do recall finding apps that would do bar code scan via the camera but that’s no way to count 10,000 items, son.
“IDS Scan” is the app I used for the last round. It’s an add on to a larger package that thankfully operates stand alone. But it was buggy.
time for a lean startup to disrupt the Inventory Management world!
@ElJefe - How do you feel about a FileMaker database producing an .xls export as prescribed? I used to work with FIleMaker in a previous life as a teacher and briefly before having Vin65 used it as a wineclub system. You could scan into a template and set up an output report that would be in the Vin65 .XLS format? (Edit for autocorrecting doing a bad job with FileMaker)
I don’t know much about FileMaker. Can I hook up a bar code reader and use it to scan SKUs into a database to count inventory? Can create a transfer order system where someone puts in the order, someone looks at the order and does the physical movement, and someone checks it in at the destination? Thanks!
Short Answer: yes
Long Answer: The more you want to create a relationship driven database that can take in more types of info (Transfers, TO’s, Histories, Counts) the more difficult it will be to build the database.
It absolutely can interface with scanners and with scales, and cameras, and pretty much every other hardware peripheral out there, but the complexity of the system grows each time. For basic scanned counts and exports it is something that you should be able to accomplish on your own, as soon as you get into the relationship level that is something that I never really got a good hold of (nor did I try all that hard) - there are a lot of certified FileMaker guys out there and the cost of the software is not huge - some of them may knock something like that out for not too much money. Check out the stater solutions here https://www.filemaker.com/solutions/starter-solutions.html#home
OK cool - thanks! In my (very) distant past I actually have relational DB experience. I’ll bore you with the details offline sometime if you ever want to hear about it 
Oh- I want to hear about it
I know this post was a year ago, but I would be interested to hear if you’ve found a solution to this? Currently our method isn’t awful but it’s always good to find more efficient ways of tracking this stuff.
