Inventory

Hey all... just wanted to try and start some discussion and hopefully bring some good information to light.

Who keeps track of their inventory? Do you use a spreadsheet or track it in your accounting software? What do you keep track of.... is it just the animals or do you also track supplies like boxes, deli cups, heat packs etc. Why do you do it the way you do?

Thanks for the participation.

We uae Quisk Books for our non live inventory. Why? It is easy and I am lazy when it comes to book keeping which is why my wife keeps the records.

well since im not a breeder i dont have to keep up with deli cups and things but for my reptiles, feedings, urates and everything else i use degei to keep track of everything.

Rich... how bout chiming in... how do the big guys do it?

Ive just been using iHerp for the animals. Everything else I looked at just seemed so darn complicated.

I use an excel spread sheet that my wife whipped up for me. I keep track of everything including livestock, breeders, production, dry goods for sale, dry goods personal, deaths, stolen, and used for personal. I have to manually type in the quantity, cost, and sale price when I get it in and then the quantity of each sold , stolen, or died. Everything is figured for me including profit or loss. Across the bottom of the sheet it tells the total spent, total in inventory, total possible at marked price, total sales, total losses, and overall what I should make if every item sold. But as good as it all sounds since I do shows only and no internet reptile sales that require shipping I never get asking price so about all this is worth is keeping the inventory. But since I’m lazy and usually extremely busy at the shows I usually forget to enter the sales so now my inventory is off so this whole thing is pretty much worthless now that I think about it. DAMM

Thanks Jim for that information. Im looking to improve on what Im doing... and its always nice to see what others are doing.... to see If I can make it work for me.

Just saw this...I started adding animals into iHerp today. Seems like a good program, and it's free. It's not too complicated, and you can do batch jobs (like feeding). It is really well organized, and so far I like it. I really like the lineage idea...you can link to other breeders to keep track of offspring and see the connections. Kinda cool. It's not too high tech, but better than index cards!

Originally Posted by Southern Wolf

Rich... how bout chiming in... how do the big guys do it?

Hah! Quite honestly, I haven't done a full inventory since 1995.

Not enough hours in a day, I guess.

But when I did keep track, I wrote my own database program in FoxPro, and used that to keep track of everything.

Interestingly enough, "inventory" has been on my mind lately, because I had someone make an informal query about buying SerpenCo. But this will be the subject of another thread I'm going to start....

I use IHerp as well... tracks all feedings, shedding...even poops each snake makes... plus Aaron has added some great features to trace breeding lineage etc.....