Mark Meagher wrote on Wed, 20 September 2006 05:50 |
It also would be nice (or maybe just a fantasy), for those that have web sites for this to be browser based so it could be accessed from the road at any time. OK. Maybe not such a great idea. |
Geri O wrote on Tue, 19 September 2006 21:20 |
I'm sitting here struggling with my home-made paperwork of inventory tracking, repair tracking, and show schedules, and what a mess. There's got to be a better way, so I've come up with an idea.
Geri O |
Pete Thurston wrote on Wed, 20 September 2006 13:12 |
The online instance would be accessible from the field, but it wouldn't make sense to be at a gig entering in new gear that was just delivered to the warehouse, etc... |
Geri O wrote on Wed, 20 September 2006 19:45 |
I'm really interested to see what Shaun is coming up with. |
Geri O wrote on Wed, 20 September 2006 17:45 |
Another idea is that I see two sets of needs appearing here...One for the owner-operator kind of guy where he's the boss, pencil-pusher, gear-loader, and truck driver all in one. The other is the guy like me...doing everything EXCEPT booking shows and signing checks (more details that I want no part of... ) Geri O |
David Buckley wrote on Thu, 21 September 2006 08:43 |
For a program developed from scratch, the first big question is what is the platform for it to run on? Mac, Windows or Web? |
Quote: |
My very first thought was that this could be easily designed in ASP.net and set up as an online instance. Since it would be written based on the .net framework, an executable version could be created as well for Windows. |
Mark Meagher wrote on Thu, 21 September 2006 07:21 |
What Shaun has sounds very interesting. Maybe he could give us a little insight in to the cross-platform capabilities of his application. Maybe somebody could volunteer a bit of space on their website so we could have a place to add input concerning what we would like to see in this package, and maybe get a feature set defined and start to take shape with this thing. |
Jonathan Woytek wrote on Thu, 21 September 2006 20:55 |
Well, it seems that I'm no longer needed here, so I'm going back into my little cave now. I'll be interested to see what Shaun can put together, and here's hoping that it might eventually run on Windows, too (not personally a windows fan, but those are the machines I have by necessity right now). jonathan |
Jonathan Woytek wrote on Thu, 21 September 2006 21:55 |
Well, it seems that I'm no longer needed here, so I'm going back into my little cave now. |
Geri O wrote on Tue, 19 September 2006 23:16 |
Since I truly believe that the interest is out there ("If you program it, they will come"? ), I'll start the "official wish list", Naturally, a maser database to work from. Info such as make, model, serial number, company inventory number. It would have a status listing, such as "available", "unavailable", "Out for repair", "Time for PM", etc. A "group" database that would be items made up of individual components. A group could be an effects rack, amp rack, or maybe even a console, its power supply, and an EZ-Tilt. I see how this part could get confusing, so it might need some special treatment that anyone might come up with. I imagine that with some folks, the group's contents could change from week to week. That's not a big thing with us at the moment, our racks stay prett consistent. Once this database is created, you can create a "booking". A booking could be classed as a "show" or a "rental". In either case, the listing would make a change of the item's status in the master database. I like the idea of bar-coding, but that might be too complicated and I do want to keep the program simple. That's my start of things. I might add or change things as we go. Geri O |
Too Tall (Curtis H. List) wrote on Sat, 23 September 2006 07:17 |
Audiopass ... uses bar codes to keep track of any speaker in the inventory so you have a history of how it measures every time it is tested ... I would think bar code would be mandatory for all the larger pieces of gear or entire racks etc. I don’t see it putting a bar code on every 10’ guitar cord, but you need to be able to quickly identify the gear to track it. |
David Buckley wrote on Fri, 22 September 2006 15:35 | ||
As a ex-professional software developer (which is what keeps me interested in this thread, as well as having some hirable kit), there are two aspects of a simple inventory control system that are (in programming terms) "interesting". Take away these two (hard!) requirements and the job becomes simple, the sort of thing you can knock up reasonably quickly, as it comes down to things, hirers, bookings, and the relations betwixt said entities. The first is in the groups mechanism, because the groups can change over time, and worse than that, between bookings yet to be delivered. Thus a simple concept of a group is x+y+z is not valid except at a point in time. Next week a rack might have x+y+z, the booking the week after needs x+q+z. Thus a barcoded rack isn't a permanent entitiy (other than the rack itself), its just a promise of what might be inside. The second is alluded to by Curtis, namely that when you book a show you want, say, half a dozen subs, of your total stock of a dozen identical subs. At booking time you dont care exactly which of six of those twelve subs, any six will do. But at checkout and checkin, you need to be sure exactly which of them it is, so if it/they goes missing you've got a serial number to report. As mentioned, you can track usage of stuff for mainenence purposes. And certainly in Europe and Aus/NZ (and maybe many other places) your tracking of mains cables is important, and most such cables will already be barcoded on their PAT test label, and some of the "usual suspect" hire packages enable PAT testing data to be held in the inventory. |
David Buckley wrote on Fri, 22 September 2006 16:35 | ||
As a ex-professional software developer (which is what keeps me interested in this thread, as well as having some hirable kit), there are two aspects of a simple inventory control system that are (in programming terms) "interesting". Take away these two (hard!) requirements and the job becomes simple, the sort of thing you can knock up reasonably quickly, as it comes down to things, hirers, bookings, and the relations betwixt said entities. The first is in the groups mechanism, because the groups can change over time, and worse than that, between bookings yet to be delivered. Thus a simple concept of a group is x+y+z is not valid except at a point in time. Next week a rack might have x+y+z, the booking the week after needs x+q+z. Thus a barcoded rack isn't a permanent entitiy (other than the rack itself), its just a promise of what might be inside. But you need to be sure the racks have the right contents. Theres also the possibility that one could ask for there to be layers of groups, or recursive groups. It would be nice to simply rent out "the disco rig", as a single entity, which is a "group" of things, but some of the things in the disco rig may include groups within, such as a rack or coffin. The second is alluded to by Curtis, namely that when you book a show you want, say, half a dozen subs, of your total stock of a dozen identical subs. At booking time you dont care exactly which of six of those twelve subs, any six will do. But at checkout and checkin, you need to be sure exactly which of them it is, so if it/they goes missing you've got a serial number to report. As mentioned, you can track usage of stuff for mainenence purposes. But you really may not care about (example) guitar leads as they are truly interchangeable, but in order to send them out, you need to know if you've got them, so you need to know how many you have... And certainly in Europe and Aus/NZ (and maybe many other places) your tracking of mains cables is important, and most such cables will already be barcoded on their PAT test label, and some of the "usual suspect" hire packages enable PAT testing data to be held in the inventory. |
Riley Casey wrote on Fri, 22 September 2006 21:02 |
If the sticker shock of things like HireTrack are a major issue look at this solution : http://www.projectmaker.com/ After building my own Filemaker based system I was very impressed with this as a commercial offering. |
Geri O wrote on Thu, 21 September 2006 20:57 I still maintain, keep it simple, make accounting optional, if at all. Geri O [/quote |
Hello Geri O I think that remark is aimed at my suggestion, and I think I misrepresented myself there. |
Jack Arnott wrote on Sat, 23 September 2006 01:05 | ||
I went back and checked the context of that post and no, it wasn't your post that I was referencing. I guess what I'm getting at is a program that won't be too difficult to write. You make some excellent points about the accounting part and that sounds fine if it's doable. I would hope that the accounting part could be written so that it doesn't continually nag the user to input prices and values should he (or his boss) is using another accounting program. Also, the weight part of the program is an EXCELLENT idea!! Didn't think of that one and man, what a help that could be for loading trucks and trailers. Good idea indeed. Take care, Geri O |
Geri O wrote on Sat, 23 September 2006 06:27 | ||||
snip- The weight idea sounds good for the guys with trucks or large trailers. Maybe even calculate HOW to load the truck. We had a company come through with a national CW act several years ago (when the fair was doing big shows) that could of used something like that. They got to the back of the trailer and didn't have room for the last few items. They had to pull a bunch of gear off the truck and repack to get it all in. They should have at least made some notes on how it was in there in the first place. |
Too Tall (Curtis H. List) wrote on Sat, 23 September 2006 11:10 |
That would be the difference between a simple musical act and a Broadway play. They have laminated cards with all the trunk numbers and diagrams of how they fit. |
Riley Casey wrote on Mon, 25 September 2006 15:57 |
If anyone is currently working with or making plans to work in Filemaker I'm happy to collaborate such projects. These are a sample of what we currently use. |
Stuart Hogg wrote on Tue, 26 September 2006 07:04 |
Riley's material was incredibly helpful to me when I was starting to build our own Filemaker solution. Got some great ideas from it. |
Riley Casey wrote on Tue, 26 September 2006 14:42 |
I'm glad to hear that turned out for you Stuart. I'd be interested to know what direction you went on that. |