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Author Topic: Inventory Managment for Production Company  (Read 10714 times)

Austin Aske

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Re: Inventory Managment for Production Company
« Reply #10 on: May 08, 2013, 03:18:24 PM »

Bud, if you go inventory management, you have to go all in.

At Logic Systems, consoles get flipped, cases opened, and everything scanned.  Console, PSU cable, multipin fanout, comms handset/station. 

Impetus for that procedure was failure to include fanout for a show 3 hours away. 

Racks, stacks, and everything else gets scanned on the way to the truck and the order is "closed out" to ensure it all made on the truck. 

Each work box, including microphones, DIs, and everything in there (adapters, etc) get scanned each time.  Work boxes are dumped and rebuilt and scanned on a per-show basis. 

For anyone used to the A-rig, B-rig, C-rig model this is a huge step.

But in order to completely leverage inventory and cross-rent accurately, it's the only way to grow the business.  IOW, inventory management causes one to change the way things are done.

Doug, that is a great heads up for us and really anyone looking at making that jump. Sounds like all or nothing!

I also looked at Filemaker or Access and building my own solution, anyone have experience with ether?

Thanks,
Austin
Thanks
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Riley Casey

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Re: Inventory Managment for Production Company
« Reply #11 on: May 13, 2013, 12:23:30 PM »

We have been using Filemaker Pro for 15 years and it's quite reliable.  Entry cost with used copies from Ebay is extremely low.  The real cost is your time and effort in building the system.  It's a blank canvas, not a production company inventory database, not a medical records database, not a software revisions database just a tool ready to be turned into one of those.  There  are several fora online that users can post questions in but be prepared for some major learning time and effort to achieve what you want.  The system we use is based on predefined case packs so that we don't track 150 items in case 2051, just that 2051 is a mics & stands pack for a music show or that case 883 is a wireless rack with eight UHF R combos. This makes it a bit more practical to build and manage on your own a small shop of ten people or less ( the most we have working with it ).  A multi site shop would almost certainly require more granularity.  A big plus side to growing your own in this area is being able to change the software down the road to accomodate changes in your business.  A major downside is not having an experienced hand at the software wheel to make things more efficient and effective than your own skills might be up to.


Doug, that is a great heads up for us and really anyone looking at making that jump. Sounds like all or nothing!

I also looked at Filemaker or Access and building my own solution, anyone have experience with ether?

Thanks,
Austin
Thanks

Tommy Peel

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Re: Inventory Managment for Production Company
« Reply #12 on: May 13, 2013, 12:50:53 PM »

Doug, that is a great heads up for us and really anyone looking at making that jump. Sounds like all or nothing!

I also looked at Filemaker or Access and building my own solution, anyone have experience with ether?

Thanks,
Austin
Thanks

I don't know much about Filemaker, but I wouldn't recomend Access. Access doesn't scale up very well and isn't recommended if you have more than one user/computer that needs access to it. I am a Computer Information Systems major at UT Tyler(graduating in the Fall) and the general consensus about Access in my database classes has been "don't go there". Access isn't considered a "true database" by most people who deal with real databases(MS SQL server, MySQL, etc...). If possible I'd recommend a SQL based solution; there are some good non-SQL database's out there too, but I'm not very familiar with them.
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Richard Turner

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Re: Inventory Managment for Production Company
« Reply #13 on: May 17, 2013, 10:27:59 AM »

Another option would be to look at using your accounting software, sage, peachtree etc. Most will accept barcode readers.

Its a bit more cumbersome to set up but it will also track your depreciation and handle your tax collection etc at the same time. It would likely be only an option for a small shop
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Looking at retiring. Local PA market has shrank to 2 guys with guitars and bose l1 compacts or expecting full line array and 16 movers on stage for $300... no middle left going back to event DJ stuff, half the work for twice the pay.

Leonard Cremer

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Re: Inventory Managment for Production Company
« Reply #14 on: May 21, 2013, 06:31:37 AM »

Another option would be to look at using your accounting software, sage, peachtree etc. Most will accept barcode readers.

Its a bit more cumbersome to set up but it will also track your depreciation and handle your tax collection etc at the same time. It would likely be only an option for a small shop
We are using Netsuite in line with that Richard mentioned here. The beauty is that all the ERP, CRM and accounting is then in one system with the inventory management. If you only want inventory management this is not an option but if you are looking for a complete solution for a midsize company this is definitely something to look at.

ProSoundWeb Community

Re: Inventory Managment for Production Company
« Reply #14 on: May 21, 2013, 06:31:37 AM »


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