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[Nils Erickson]

I'm glad to see this thread, I have also been looking for a good label solution.  I'm not yet sold on bar code and scanning, as it is so labor intensive, but have been looking for good asset labels.  I have some labeled shrink wrap which is great, and PAL labels for cases which also work well.
I have been using Current RMS for almost two years now.  It is a reasonably priced, cloud based system for rental inventory management.  It does a good job for my planning and scheduling, makes good looking quotes and invoices, generates pick lists for shows, etc... I plan to integrate it with quickbooks this year as well, will see how that goes.  Data entry is a lot of work with any of these programs, and doing it accurately pays off.  I am really glad to have the "reports" information, detailing lots of useful info like product rental income, customer income, sub rental data. I also like being able to access it from my phone's browser, even if the interface on the phone is a bit crammed.
Flex looked very good to me as well, though a bit more expensive.

Thanks for all of your label suggestions, I am looking forward to checking into them.

Cheers,
Nils

[Steve Eudaly]

I'm going to be using Flex when I finally sign up for it. I'm still working on the back end infrastructure (ensuring everything is labeled, and then building their inventory import spreadsheet). I don't want to waste my 60-day free trial!
.........
Also, Flex needs an open port on your network's firewall, another company owner told me he had problems  making *that* work, so I didn't want that hassle. This way, I'm also not dependent on having an internet connection.]

We went down the same path and were very excited for Flex. Signed up, ordered the printer and barcode scanners they recommended. Started getting everything entered in the system. However we could not get the printer to work with Flex whatsoever. They're support pretty much told us they couldn't help anymore and we needed to hire an IT person, although several of us that were working with it are arguably pretty decent at IT.

Anyway, we still weren't out any money on the software itself, so we started looking at Current. Much more modern featureset and user interface. Definitely fits our workflow better, so we switched. Happy we did. Cheaper, too! I've almost got the Zebra GX420T that Flex recommended we buy (but then wouldn't help with) fully functional with Current (still have a few sizing issues to figure out). Hopefully soon we'll be ready to barcode.

EIM's labels do look pretty fantastic and certainly more durable. I'm very curious how the printing process would work.

[Rob Spence]

I'm glad to see this thread, I have also been looking for a good label solution.  I'm not yet sold on bar code and scanning, as it is so labor intensive, but have been looking for good asset labels.  I have some labeled shrink wrap which is great, and PAL labels for cases which also work well.
I have been using Current RMS for almost two years now.  It is a reasonably priced, cloud based system for rental inventory management.  It does a good job for my planning and scheduling, makes good looking quotes and invoices, generates pick lists for shows, etc... I plan to integrate it with quickbooks this year as well, will see how that goes.  Data entry is a lot of work with any of these programs, and doing it accurately pays off.  I am really glad to have the "reports" information, detailing lots of useful info like product rental income, customer income, sub rental data. I also like being able to access it from my phone's browser, even if the interface on the phone is a bit crammed.
Flex looked very good to me as well, though a bit more expensive.

Thanks for all of your label suggestions, I am looking forward to checking into them.

Cheers,
Nils

It’s amusing that a computerized solution is also labor intensive.



Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

[Frank Koenig]

It’s amusing that a computerized solution is also labor intensive.

I was working at Tencor Instruments back around 1980 when we instituted a computerized material requirements planning (inventory and manufacturing control and documentation) system. We had been all paper prior to that. (This was not the place with the stupid smart numbers.)

We hired a really great consultant to get us set up. As the automated system was going to impose certain changes on our business process he had us get the entire new system up and running ON PAPER before cutting over to the computer. This was a painful few weeks for pretty much everyone in the company. The entire engineering staff was busy filling out forms for every part and sub-assembly. But when the day came to throw the switch it went off pretty much without a hitch.

I know this is not terribly relevant to today's situations, but it's something to think about. The business process and the system need to fit and people need to understand how it works. Later I was involved in far less successful integrations between business processes and automated systems at other companies.

--Frank

[Dave Garoutte]

The problem with any powerful software, is it isn't simple.
A half-assed implementation equals a half-assed system.
As Frank noted, take the time up front to do it right.
This absolutely fits the 'buy' once cry once motto.

[Nils Erickson]

It’s amusing that a computerized solution is also labor intensive.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

Rob, I agree... we simply shift the work elsewhere sometimes.  However, once the products are entered, I have found that the entire quote and invoice process is so much faster.  It used to take me forever to create quotes and invoices manually using templates that I had built in Pages. And after all that, there was no data to show.  Here I spend time entering products, but the wealth of data generated is incredible.  Rather than having a gut feeling of how much return any piece of equipment has in a given timeframe, it is easy to generate a report.  Also, scheduling that equipment is no longer a clusterf*** of google calendar entries.
So, yes, we shifted the work and added some to it even, but with a ton of benefit.

[Tim Hite]

I know this is not terribly relevant to today's situations, but it's something to think about. The business process and the system need to fit and people need to understand how it works. Later I was involved in far less successful integrations between business processes and automated systems at other companies.

--Frank

This hearkens back to botched SAP R3 migrations in the 90's that would shut entire organizations down for a couple weeks because the consultants didn't get the business processes running correctly before implementation.

[Scott Helmke]

Rob, I agree... we simply shift the work elsewhere sometimes.  However, once the products are entered, I have found that the entire quote and invoice process is so much faster.  It used to take me forever to create quotes and invoices manually using templates that I had built in Pages. And after all that, there was no data to show.  Here I spend time entering products, but the wealth of data generated is incredible.  Rather than having a gut feeling of how much return any piece of equipment has in a given timeframe, it is easy to generate a report.  Also, scheduling that equipment is no longer a clusterf*** of google calendar entries.

That's the key - it's a big pain in the butt to set up, but the payoff is that most things get easier and it'll scale up without much drama. If you're always going to be the company with one system in one truck, don't bother. If you want to make money off *all* your gear, implement a proper system.

[Scott Trouwborst]

I've had good luck with Brother P-Touch desktop printers. If you have already established bar codes in your system you can easily print them, or create new bar codes and print your own asset tags with individual bar codes on each. It also allows you to create different size labels to fit different size pieces of gear. However I have not been able to have Hiretrack or Flex print directly to the Brother printer.

[ProSoundWeb Community]