Bar code Stock Control Access or Excel??

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dave Savage
  • Start date Start date
D

Dave Savage

Hello there!

We run a business with around 1000 line items for which we need to
employee a 'homemade' stock control system (I am thinking of a bar code
scanner and a lap top for speed).
Question is with the latest version of excel becoming so much more
flexible which is the best for the task - Access or Excel??

I am aware either way I go this is a fairly big task!! However I
appreciate any advice - there may even be threads on here with answers
to this exact question?? Any advice hints and tips would be
appreciated.

Thanks in Advance

Dave
 
Dave,

Generally Access excels (eh?) at keeping tables of data, and handling
relationships between them. Excel is better for analysis. Many projects
like this start off in Excel, only for the developer to realize it needed to
be in Access all along.

For analysis, should you even need it, it's easy enough to do queries to the
Access table to get the data.

There are off-the-shelf applications you could use, and would generally be
better than reinventing the wheel, so to speak. Try an internet search for
"inventory control" (no quotes).
--
Earl Kiosterud
www.smokeylake.com

"Dave Savage" <[email protected]>
wrote in message
news:D[email protected]...
 
Thanks for the info Earl. I thought as much. I will have a little browse
as you advised.

Best Regards

Dave
 
Dave,
I would *definitely* do this in Access. I think Allen Browne has an
inventory control DB on his website that you can download and play
with/modify. Of course, you can still query the DB from within Excel,
so you can do your charting etc from there. That said, the way you
model things in Excel and Acess are very different, but if you use each
for what it's best at, you'll have a fairly solid solution.
http://www.allenbrowne.com/AppInventory.html

One problem with Excel in this regard is that it's *too* flexible.
Stuff like referential integrity really cannot be enforced in Excel,
whereas in Access it's simple.
 
You could use either Excel or Access for the job. Access would be
better simply because it is a database and inventory applications are
better suited to database programs.

If you want to see a very simple Excel inventory toye spreadsheet, you
can download one using the following URL:
http://www.taltech.com/downloads/Inventory.exe


The following is a link to download an inventory sample for Access:
http://www.taltech.com/downloads/Inventory2000.zip

Both samples are from a company called TAL Technologies which
specializes in bar code printing software and RS232 data collection
software. They also sell bar code scanners at very reasonable prices.
You may want to read the following article on their web site regarding
how to interface a bar code scanner to a PC:
http://www.taltech.com/products/interface.htm
 
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