Inventory Control

[Toefuzz]

Greetings all! I just found FileMaker after growing weary of banging my head against the wall with Access and thought I'd see if there was a premade solution before I start building my own database. I've played with the Business Productivity Package and can see how I can make it work but wanted some advice first.

I work for a small TV and Appliance store and am looking to upgrade our software from a flat file to a database structure. The most important aspect of our business is serialized tracking of inventory. For example, we can have 10 refrigerators in house that are the same model number with 10 different serial numbers. My thought is to just look the model number information up in a related table. Where I'm having a problem is working with the serial numbers. At the time of sale we know the serial numbers of all the model numbers being sold in house. Unfortunately we also sell products online and don't know the serial numbers that have been shipped until after we have already completed the sale (we receive invoice from regional warehouse).

Obviously things are a little more involved than my brief description but I thought I'd throw that out there as a starting point b/c I really have no idea what questions ya'll are going to ask :

Any thoughts or ideas?

[Søren Dyhr]

It's not something you should spend too much time on modifying into your needs, instead should build it yourself.

The issues you here could be dealt with these new fm8 features GetNthRecord( over a relation, the Go To Related Records from a found set of records as well as thetajoins although thetajoins have been around since fm7. Now to give you a rough idea of how you can make something in the vicinty of what you're after study this template:

http://www.nightwing.com.au/FileMaker/demos7/demo705.html

...although he uses a CF instead of theta-joins, which means that there could be a speed penalty to pay.

--sd