I need some advice on the best way to keep track of household inventory. Here is a simplified explanation of the tables I have:
Product table (manufacturer, website, product details)
Orders table (store, invoice, payment method) and has a lookup column for the products purchased on that order
Inventory contains lookup columns for the Product and the Order number which then bring in the related columns.
I’m curious if there is a better design than this though as it takes a while to enter items I buy as I have to:
-
Enter the product in the Product table
-
Enter the order info in the Order table and select the product
-
Enter the product and order number in the Inventory table along with the quantity.
When I select the product in step 2, is there any way to automatically create it in the Inventory table or some better design to streamline the 3rd step?
Hi Sara,
The three tables you mention is fairly typical.
What I hear is that you want to reduce the capture effort when doing a goods receipt with relation to the purchase order.
Add a button with addrow() where you create entries in the inventory table for the relevant PO, and pull in all lines from the PO, and the ordered quantities as a default into the gr qty columns.
Would be easiest if you could share an example document and what you have so far
Regards Piet
1 Like
Hi Sara,
One solution that comes to mind for streamlining is creating a capture table that temporarily holds incoming photos of products and then using a AI prompt to extract that information in a usable format (i.e., JSON) to add to other tables.
Another solution, alternative to using up AI credits, is if you use iPhone/iPad, then you can take pictures and pull out any existing text using Apple’s Shortcut app to “Extract Text from Image”. Then, you can send that information to Coda doc via webhook.
Hope this helps!
@Piet_Strydom This is great advice. I used the addrow function to create the working table below! I would have liked to find a way to reduce from 3 tables to 2 and might be willing to accept having less data to do so.
My thinking was that Coda would allow me to use the Orders table’s Product Column as an Inventory view instead of having to create a separate Inventory table.
Is this a Coda design limitation or is there someway to view that column as a table?
1 Like
Hi Sarah,
I do not see Quantity columns? What do you mean with “Inventory”?
If you do not have a need to track quantities of inventory, and you always receive, return or sell a full order, then you do not need a separate inventory table, you can simply manage with statuses like you currently do.
P
@Piet_Strydom I have added the missing quantity columns but now the logic is completely flawed as I have been updating the quantity manually since there wasn’t a clear way to enter in the quantity for each item in the orders table.
I want the inventory table to only show a single row for each inventory item if possible.
I think I probably need to track quantity in the orders table for each item that I select and then have the inventory table reflect the total quantity for each item, right?
Is Coda able to handle more complex inventory tables with its formulas?
Hi Sarah
As this is a fairly regular topic, I have decided to add an example to my Quick Examples doc.
I give an overview in this video:
The example is on the page Inventory Management in this doc:
Hope this helps.
Shout if you have further questions
Hi Sarah, I gave it a try as well in a new page of your doc. Purchasing & Inventory
Is it something similar to what you had in mind?
Just add a new order and use the button in the modal view to insert the products (or create new ones).
The inventory table populates automatically with the items selected in the order
