MIMF

I've been working in the same privately owned mid-sized music store for about 15 years. The owner is a veteran of about 35 years in the musical instrument business and we are also good friends. Its a great shop with lots of long time loyal clients and a permanent fixture of the community. The problem is that we're geezers. We have no POS or inventory system. It's unlikely that we will ever have any sort of automated system in this shop. I'm finding that to better serve my clients I need some sort of customer database.

I work quite like an independent contractor and I keep my own inventory of parts and supplies. Is there anyone here who uses a computerized system for invoices and inventory? I would like to find a fully functional template that uses MS Access for customer and workorder input, tracking, inventory, and invoices. I like the idea of getting an Access template because I can fully customise it to meet my needs. I'm on the steep learning curve of designing a database but its a long road to getting something that could reasonably be worth using.

I could see myself purchasing a software package if someone would recommend something but the price needs to fit my one man operation and small inventory.

Hi Mark

There's a piece of software called The Luthier's Workbench which might meet your needs it costs $79 but you can download a fully functioning 30 day trial.

You can get a copy here: http://www.whistlingfishsoftware.com.au ... wnload.htm

It has more details at the website: http://www.whistlingfishsoftware.com.au/Products.htm

All the best
Dave

Open office is available for free, works on apple, pc, and linux systems, and has spreadsheet, database, writing functions, internet functions and other stuff I don't even know what to do with.

Would it be a solution to any of your problems?

My inventory and "work orders" system is a large dry-erase white board on the wall....

Not what you wanted to hear, but it works for me!

As a hobby builder, I don't have need for a large database and software system but we went through a search last year at my "day job" for open source freeware ERP systems. I work in research at a University and we needed a CRM/ERP solution. There are several good ones that you could adapt and are available from sourceforge.net. We opted for SugarCRM which is pretty easy to set up for customer relations management. There are some modules that plug in for ERP but we didn't find a great one. Others that are highly touted for ERP are OpenBravo which is a cloud environment and really nice looking screens, Adempiere which is a little more difficult to use and several standalone ERP platforms as well as CRM platforms. We decided ACCESS and Microsoft were the worst of the bunch. Luck with your project management search.

I've bought the software from the link. I'll post to this thread what it does when I figure it out.