I'm a relative n00b to Access (I'm on Access 2010 via Win7). I run inventory management (as well as ticket\sales management) for a furniture store with 2 employees and 1 owner. The owner is supposedly moving toward using PeachTree Accounting Software (can't remember its new name) in the future, but we've seen little progress in that regard.
I have a fairly advanced spreadsheet setup in Excel to track plenty of statistics about our sales and traffic figures, but I feel like I could utilize Access to cover both that (though maybe not traffic, necessarily) AND my inventory.
I've brute-forced my way into the Microsoft Inventory template, making it work...sort of. I've got a few issues specific to my situation that I need to figure out how to adapt, if anyone is willing to explain how or help me out in some regard.
The main issue I have is that, as with most furniture stores, I deal quite a bit in "Layaway". What that means for my inventory management is that I have pieces of inventory that are "tagged" by me when a customer has a ticket written up. Where this becomes an issue is writing multiple tickets for multiple customers for the same particular set of furniture....say 7 tickets, 7 customers, but only 4 immediately available sets. The pickup dates of each customer are important, too, in that I can "shuffle" things around in order to constantly move furniture to customers that come in needing stuff instantly, while not compromising my ability to fulfill the layaway tickets.
What I need from an Access database is everything the Microsoft template offers, but with some tweaks:
- I need to be able to have "negative" inventory. What this means is that I need to be able to put in "tickets" that "tag" furniture, even if that furniture is not in my particular inventory.That way, I have instant access to what pieces I need to bring in on my next truck. This is probably the biggest issues I need fixed.
- I need to be able to print off an "available inventory" report, showing what products are in my building at the time of printing.
- (Less important) I would like the ability to make a purchase order that comes from one company, but includes pieces from multiple companies. This isn't terribly necessary, but it would eliminate the need for multiple purchase orders for the same truck. (I basically have a "corporate" warehouse that I pull stuff from, but some of it overlaps things I can bring in straight from the actual manufacturer, if that makes sense).
- I need the ability to somehow track customer's potential pickup\delivery dates as they get closer. This is also less important, as it's something we're on top off with our physical tickets. But, it would be nice if this is something that doesn't take a ridiculous amount of coding\editing to do.
So, is there anyone here that can offer me some help or point me somewhere that can?
Much obliged!