Inventory problem

[John Chamberlain]

I have a problem with a report that needs to show what the inventory is at the start of any given month. This is made difficult because the report may not be requested until the following month, or later. I have tried several script ploys, but just can't seem to get one to work.

Making a run on the first of a given month would seem to solve this, but if the first falls on a weekend or a holiday this falls apart because inventory can be increased or decreased on any weekend/holiday. Moreover, getting someone to never fail to run the report on the first is just not practical.

 

Is there any way to script this? Maybe some sort of auto-run thing?

 

TIA

[jbante]

Are you hosting your system with FileMaker Server? (If not, you should really consider it.) If so, you can schedule a script to run server-side every month, which resolves the issue of relying on a person to remember to run the process. Alternatively, a start-up script could check how long it's been since the last report, and remind a user to run the report when they log-in on the first of the month.

 

If inventory can be adjusted on any weekend or holiday, how does that make it any different from any first-of-the-month that falls on a weekday? And if you track inventory transactions in addition to current quantities, you can build the report by combining the transactions with last month's values — there isn't necessarily any need to reference current values. (If you aren't tracking inventory transactions, you should really consider it.) Alternatively, if you aren't a 24/7 operation, you could schedule a server-side script to run when no users are working, like 1 a.m.

[John Chamberlain]

Thanks, this gives me a something to think about.