August 22, 2010, 12:47 am
I manage a restaurant, and I've tried to inventory the liquor on a weekly basis, but have a difficult time keeping up with it because it's so time consuming. We outsourced an inventory company for a couple of months to handle it for us, but I realized they use the same inventory methods I do, except they're not on-site all week and have little knowledge of the inner workings of the business. But they bang it out in record time.
I noticed the only difference between their method and mine was they had a laptop connected to a scale and a hand-held bar-code scanner, whereas I use a pen and paper. I'm pretty familiar with office and could probably set up the ground-work for a really solid system for inventory, and possibly expand beyond just liquor, but I don't know how to interface these products (that I found cheap online) with Excel. Is there software available so I could:
1) Put the bottle on the scale
2) Scan the barcode
3) Move onto the next bottle.
I know this is a lot for one question - I was hoping for an expert.