Inventory management is important for any business that involves the buying, selling, or storing of goods. Whether you run a small retail shop or manage a large warehouse, keeping track of your stock levels is essential for ensuring you have the right products available to meet customer demand.
While traditional methods of inventory management often rely on manual spreadsheets or complex software, Baserow offers a user-friendly and intuitive solution that streamlines the process to create a comprehensive inventory management system.
What we’ll do
In this tutorial, we’ll walk you through the process of how to use Baserow to track your inventory and manage stock levels. We’ll cover the following steps:
- Set up your Baserow database
- Create tables in Baserow
- Link tables in the database
- Create customized views
Prerequisites
To complete this tutorial, you’ll need the following:
Let’s dive in!
Build an inventory management system
Before we create an inventory management system, let’s think about the benefits of creating an inventory management system. Inventory management systems help:
- Track stock levels in real-time, which helps prevent stockouts and overstocking.
- Make informed purchasing decisions based on historical sales data and current stock levels.
- Reduce inventory costs and unnecessary expenses by optimizing stock levels and avoiding costly stockouts.
- Meet customer expectations by ensuring the products they need are available when they want them.
- Streamline operations and efficiently manage inventory movements, including incoming shipments, outgoing orders, and internal transfers.
1. Set up your Baserow database
Log in to your existing Baserow account or create a new account if you don’t have one already.
Once you log in, you can access the dashboard to add workspaces and databases. You can work with an existing workspace, database, or table, or set up a new workspace from scratch.
In this tutorial, we’ll set up a new workspace and create a database from scratch.
-
To create a new workspace, simply click on the + Create workspace button. Then, click on Add workspace.
If you’re just starting with Baserow, we recommend you read our support article on how to create a workspace and how to add collaborators to a workspace.
-
Now that the workspace is set up, you can either create a database from scratch or choose a template from our template library. Let’s add a database to the workspace.
-
Click on the + Create new button to start creating a new database.
-
Select the “Database” option to create a database from scratch.
-
Next, add a new table or click on a table within the existing database to open it. A default table will be added to the newly created database.
That’s it! We’ve created a new database. Now, we can populate, manage, and organize data in Baserow.
2. Create tables in Baserow
Within the database, we’ll need to create tables to represent different aspects of the inventory.
We will create dedicated tables for each aspect of your inventory management. For each table, define relevant fields to capture essential information.
Create a table called Inventory to store information about the products. Add fields for the following information:
- Product name: The name of the product
- Product ID/SKU: A unique identifier for each product
- Supplier: The supplier of the product
- Cost: The cost of the product
- Unit: The unit of measure for the product (e.g., pieces, kilograms, liters)
- Current quantity: The current quantity of the product in stock
- Minimum quantity: The minimum quantity of the product that you want to have in stock
- Reorder quantity: The quantity of the product that you want to order when the current quantity falls below the minimum quantity
Create a table called Purchase Orders to track stock levels for each product. Add fields for the following information:
- Purchase Order Number: A unique identifier for each purchase order
- Supplier: The supplier of the products
- Order Date: The date the purchase order was placed
- Delivery Date: The date the purchase order is expected to be delivered
- Products: A linked field to the Inventory table to specify the products that were ordered
- Quantity Ordered: The quantity of each product that was ordered
Create a table called Sales Orders to track your sales. Add fields for the following information:
- Sales Order Number: A unique identifier for each sales order
- Customer: The customer who placed the order
- Order Date: The date the sales order was placed
- Products: A linked field to the “Inventory” table to specify the products that were sold
- Quantity Sold: The quantity of each product that was sold
3. Link tables in the database
We have multiple tables in this database, so we can link them together using the link to table field:
- Link the Inventory and Purchase Orders tables: Create a link to table field in the Purchase Orders table that links to the Inventory table. This will allow you to easily select the product that you are ordering.
- Link the Inventory and Sales Orders tables: Create a link to table field in the Sales Orders table that links to the Inventory table. This will allow you to easily select the product that you are selling and which customers have purchased each product.
As you create purchase orders and record sales, Baserow will automatically update the inventory levels in the Inventory table. This will help you to track your stock levels and ensure that you never run out of product.
4. Create customized views
Baserow views allow you to filter and sort the inventory data in different ways. This can be helpful for quickly finding the information you need.
Let’s create the following views to visualize your inventory data:
- Grid view to filter all products that are low on stock.
- Form view to add a new inventory item and create a new row in the Inventory table with the required information.
- Grid view to filter all products that have been purchased by a particular customer.
- Kanban view for tracking product status
- Calendar view for upcoming orders.
Use formulas to automate calculations, such as calculating the total value of your inventory.
Summary
With Baserow, you can easily track your inventory, and manage stock levels to create an efficient and effective inventory management system that will help you run your business more smoothly.
You can also build an automated system that tracks item sales and receipts, automatically updates stock levels, sends low-stock alerts and critical event notifications (e.g., purchase confirmations), and triggers automatic reorders to prevent stockouts. This will ensure efficient inventory management and prevent costly disruptions.
Other useful resources
The following articles may also be helpful:
- How to automate sending emails from Baserow without code
- How to automate Baserow form submission notifications
- How to model your Baserow data
In case you’ve run into an issue while following this tutorial, feel free to reach out to ask for help in the Baserow community.
