Inventory System VBA

[JhnSanchez]

Hi everyone,

Just wondering if anyone can help me out here, I'm thinking of ways to make an inventory system for our machines in warehouse. To be specific, inventory system for our consumable parts for our plasma cutters like, nozzles, caps, etc.. Would it be easier to use excel VBA for this one or just an access form?

Thanks.

 

[Jeffrey Mahoney]

I created an inventory system in Excel because I felt the flexibility was needed to get daily reports from other systems and alter the results quicker. I find that Access has a huge amount of overhead to get what I need.

 

[Joe4]

All things equal, typically relational database programs, like Access, are better equipped for things like inventory.
Of course, that is dependent upon your proficiency in both (so "all things may not be equal"!)

If you do a search on "Microsoft Access Inventory Templates", you should be able to find many pre-defined templates you can use (and some of them are free).

 

[Joe4]

I find that Access has a huge amount of overhead to get what I need.

Jeffrey, just kind of curious as to what you regard as a "huge amount of overhead". Are you just talking about the learning curve for Access?

I find Access form development MUCH easier than Excel form development. With Excel, you need to use VBA to manually map every single field on every single form to the appropriate cells.
With Access, form fields can be automatically bound to the underlying tables without any VBA or manual work. If you create the Form from the table, it is just "drag and drop".

Initially, I found Access a bit daunting and hard to work in. But that was because I really did not understand the Rules of Database Normalization, so I was doing a lot of "programming myself into corners", and really simple tasks became difficult. Once someone pointed me in the right direction, and I re-designed my database according to the Rules of Normalization, things got much better and I was able to create some pretty cool things with Access. It is definitely not something you want to dive into if you don't have a good handle of those concepts first though.

 

[Jeffrey Mahoney]

Setting up new reports, IMHO, is very tedious. Being able to get data in and out in a meaningful way leaves me exporting the data and making it look nice for charts and tables. I've created public driven access databases in Access and they work great for repetition.

Early on I had troubles with joins and queries, but I enlisted a smarter person than me, and with examples I was off and running. I'm not sure the everyday user would find Access as useful.

 

[Jeffrey Mahoney]

The application that I built in Excel was able to help the auditors find their inventory and quantify results faster. Paper vs Computer with product ID scanner.

 

[JhnSanchez]

I do agree when you are using Access and keeping in mind database normalization, it becomes a lot less of a hassle. VBA kinda gets confusing to certain degree sometimes.