Introduction

Hello All, New user here. I consider myself an amateur, my peers consider me an expert. Most of what I have learned has been from Forums like this one. I am here to continue to learn, and will post my suggestions when I have them. I manage inventory in a warehouse. I am working on developing a database that does what I need it to do. I find excel to be the easiest place to start, as I can easily manipulate functions and see results. I eventually plan to have a programmer, make a pretty face to this beast, and make it much more user friendly. I have also considered using Access , as I think using office products will be beneficial to future expansion, and use of the data to produce different types of media (catalogs, flyers, web postings.... etc). My warehouse houses 4 companies, with inventory scattered throughout and mixed in. So I have to not only locate and keep track of all product movement throughout the physical building, I am also monitoring who owns what parts, and who has sold which parts, so that each company gets credit for the sale, and inventory shows the correct # of products on hand. I have also incorporated search functions to search for different locations, products, and storage units. I can see where a part sits, what tray, in what skid, on what shelf, in what zone, down what Aisle. This has been a very complicated task. I also market these products through 4 outlets, Amazon, eBay, Web, and Retail, So I have also incorporated ways to import the reports from these locations, and keep track of where each part was sold, and what price it was sold for, and then link it back to the invoice that tells who , and where it was sold to. Once I have tracked the product sale to the outlet, I than combined all the sales into a master sales list, that will show me what was sold, where, by who and for how much. This is also searchable by part.

Why all the effort you ask? Well I have looked at many software applications advertised to assist with web sales, and inventory management. And Cost has not been my obstacle, it is the fact that my company like many, does business in its own way, and a lot of the applications that We would need to pay for would cost a great deal of money, and they would need to be adapted to our scenario, and be limited in capability to achieve the goals or our complex situation. Thus creating our own structure, we will be able to produce useful results. The initial work has been tremendous, but the results are starting to show, and I am about 55% of the way complete with the program structure, However it will probably take as many as 5 years to inventory the 500,000 sqft warehouse full of inventory that has been randomly placed throughout over the past 40 years.

In all I would like to thank all of those who have posted in the forums, and have help me achieve such a great deal work. I hope I can slowly return the favor!