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Small Company Inventory Control - Need Opinions

Jul 31, 2012 3:28 PM

I work for a small company that mostly does rentals - meaning we ship stuff out, and, at some point, it comes back. We do also do sales, but rentals accounts for probably 95% or more of our customers.

For the last few years, we've been pretty much flying by the seat of our pants as far as inventory goes. There's no way to track what's coming up unless you manually take a look at the upcoming gigs and do a mental guestimation of what you think might go out on those jobs. There's also the "hey, the shelves seem kinda empty. Do we have enough gear?" thing that happens on occasion, which normally causes us to spend extra cash to rush order more equipment.

It's finally time to sink a bit of time and money into dealing with the situation. But where do we begin?

Hopefully looking for input on systems you've used or heard specifically about or just found on the interwebs, if that's the way you roll.

Thanks in advance for any help y'all can give!

smtatertot13 smtatertot13

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Without knowing industry, etc, check out Rental Tracker Pro at rentaltracker.com.

There are others but they're a bit bigger, complicated, and designed for larger enterprises like Rental Control Management Software by Pacific Rental Solutions.

Whichever solution you go with, make sure the underlying database isn't in some proprietary format and can be accessed and the data can be exported in case you need to migrate to another solution. You don't want all your data trapped in that application.

Another option is to have someone build the application for you but that's usually more expensive than building some off the shelf package but you get what you want customized to your needs. You may not need that if your needs are simple and typical of many rental companies.

first2summit first2summit
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@first2summit: Thanks for the great reply!

As you mentioned, our ideal would be to have something customized to our needs (especially given that our gear is strange and doesn't generally fit into most categories, but we're definitely not at a place to sink the kind of money required for such an endeavor.

We definitely work within the theatrical/production world, so it's a plus that RentalTrack.com specifically calls out a similar industry directly on their front page.

I've already forwarded your info to our rentals guy. We appreciate your help!

Anyone else have anything handy-dandy to share? :)

smtatertot13 smtatertot13

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