Looking for an Electronic components Inventory system

Anyone know of a good free electronic components inventory control?

Trying to get away from Excel.
I have tried zParts but it does not have reports and $ values
I also tried Express Inventory from NCH which I found quite good but it doesn't have sub categories.

I need to be able to:
- Generate a report based on minimum quantity (shopping list)
- Generate a stock value report
- Create sub categories and have the same product code but with different qty/price in different sub cat.


Mike

I can understand the frustration with Excel as Excel isn't designed to do what you want. There is no shortage of various inventory control software out there but since regardless of what you buy all your data will need to be moved into a data base I would consider just building my own data base in Access.

Using Access, you can:

Add new data to a database, such as a new item in an inventory
Edit existing data in the database, such as changing the current location of an item
Delete information, perhaps if an item is sold or discarded
Organize and view the data in different ways
Share the data with others via reports, e-mail messages, an intranet , or the Internet

Click to expand...

You may want to **broken link removed** and do some looking into Access as a possible choice.

Ron

Ron,

Funny you are mentioning this, after writing my question I started building my own application in Access, I am an ex software developer trying to make a switch to electronics.
If I don't find a solution soon, I guess I will have to mess with my old life one more time!

Thanks

Mike

Why pay for MS Access when OpenOffice can be dowloaded for free?

I have not used the database program yet, but the word processor, spreadsheet and drawing programs are quite good.
OpenOffice.org - The Free and Open Productivity Suite

Totally agree with you Hero.

I figured a way out using Express Inventory. I just include what would be a sub category within the product code. For example a 1k axial resistor I call it 1K-TH and its equivalent SMD I call it 1K-1206 so this way i can recognize parts by their code, they appear together in a sorted list and I can have same value in different formats.

I find Express Inventory the simplest software that does nothing else than what it should do. I get a shopping list based on min/max or an inventory count only one click away.

Mike

My bad for not mentioning the Open Office apps. The main reason I have used Access is I have embedded data bases on web servers and for small data bases Access worked for me. I never had much luck using Open Office in .ASP applications. Not because of Open Office but likely because my programming skills suck. Likewise foer using MSSQL versus MySQL. Anyway, I used Access because I had it and planting it in a web worked for me at the time. I am sure the open source software would have worked just as well if I had a clue what I was doing at the time.

Ron