Software Keeping Track of Stock?

[Ned Torbin]

Hi everyone, I've taken delivery of a few items and also pre-ordered things. I realized the potential for the difficulty of keeping track of everything, and the easy mistake that can be made in ordering some thing you already pre-ordered or took delivery of.

I started putting together a spreadsheet with some categories I thought made sense, but I figured I would ask here if anyone else has software they use that's easier, and also if the topic headings I put on the spreadsheet are missing anything that I should consider keeping track of.

Thanks for any experience you might share!

 

[Greg@mnrr]

Ned: Great start on your inventory. I just have several suggestions that may help you with keeping track of your inventory.

1. Use a spread sheet for rolling stock and a separate sheet for motive power.

2. Put the road name in the first column to help find specific rolling stock or locomotives at a glance. (Started with my Motive power after buying a CN&W locomotive #1663 and discovering that I already own one.) If you are using Excel, then you can do a sort and keep road names in alphabet order.

I update my spreadsheet whenever I do equipment maintenance or weathering.

-Greg

 

[dave1905]

Excel or Open Office (free) can be the easiest and allows you to custom tailor your list to the categories you need or want. Some people are collectors and care about the stock numbers and what box they store the car in. Others are more concerned with the length, capacity and if its assigned to a particular service. For example, I don't pre-order cars and you evidently do, so I wouldn't have even thought to include a "Delivered" column, but you need one.

I used MS Access to create a database app that generates Car cards and Waybills, and also creates lots of various reports.

One field I found useful is "Family". I can designate the SP, SSW, and TNO as part of the SP "family" so I can group them together the same way they organize cars in the "Official Railway Equipment Register".

 

[santafewillie]

If you're going to use your own spreadsheet, then Greg's suggestion of keeping engines and freight cars on separate sheets will be a great help. Also his suggestion of putting the railroad name first will make things real easy to find.
After setting up my own spreadsheet about 20 years ago, I ran across CarCards7.11 on an operations forum. It happened to be written by Dave, from post above. It worked better than mine because it interfaced with Access (which I hadn't learned yet) to print car cards and switching programs. It included towns and industries and a whole bunch more. I don't know if it is still available. Great program but it lacked one thing that I sorely needed, a maintenance program. I found one much later with a program called Easy Model Railroad Inventory by Bob Langer. Bob no longer supports the program, but it is available still from here. It still works with Win10. The difference between his and Dave's is that the switching program in EMRI is more difficult to use, it's more manual; and of course the ability to track maintenance.
So for the present I use both, CarCards for the switching program and EMRI for the maintenance records. Both programs have customized sorts and lists to work with, including graphs in EMRI. If you're just going to use the spreadsheet for keeping track of what you have, then yours is adequate. You can always add additional fields as needed. Personally I would leave out era since I only purchase equipment to fit my era to begin with. I would also include color, but I am tracking over 800 pieces of rolling stock.

 

[Ned Torbin]

Thanks a lot guys, always good to build off of all your experiences. I will definitely apply these suggestions mentioned here and keep referring back!