Armed and Dangerous!

I JUST received my wireless scanner to go with my new IMagic inventory software.

Fellow stagers, are you seated?  OK, I picked up the complete package of: inventory tracking/invoicing software, a wireless scanner, and barcode software for $440!!!! 

Although Ambiance Staging is the relative new kid on the block we have already built up a sizable inventory of furniture and accessories.  Though this has been great for us, it has proven more difficult than I imagined to keep track of my inventory.  I don't know if you can relate but I found myself:

1. buying new items last minute to fill in job to job and neglecting to tag and inventory them
   
2. transferring items directly from one job to another with no accounting 
3. grabbing things for staging consultations on the go when I’m in a hurry neglecting to mark it out. 

To top it off I rent furniture and accessories from 4 other sources, sometimes 2 sources per job, and work with several local and national furniture companies on some of the higher end homes.  The end result is that our inventory tracking system was in a MUDDLE!

So I decided to dedicate some time to get organized.  I bought some more great shelving from Costco, plastic bins, large Ziploc bag for bedsets and pillows, wire baskets in shelving for pillows, color coded stickers, labels, pens ++++ and got to work organizing my inventory and putting on the computer.  I decided to just create my own template in excel but quickly became frustrated because I couldn’t customize it to my needs.

That’s when I discovered “Props On The Go” owned by Lucy Butcher, of Presentation is Everything.  Lucy, a fellow stager in Colorado Springs, has been searching for the perfect inventory control software for almost 5 years and recently hit the jackpot with IMagic!  I purchased the system from her on Monday and had downloaded it and was using it almost immediately.  She simply e-mailed me the  software key.  I did a bit of research before I purchased, and spoke to another local company who had purchased and were extremely happy with the software.  I found that comparable systems go for at least $1,500-2,000, but from what I can tell, there is no sacrifice in features or quality of product.

Some of the major benefits include:

• Barcode compatible so you can just zap your items for each job and it deducts them from the stock
• When they come back in, you simply zap them back into stock.
• You can upload a photo for each item!’
• Very flexible in allowing you to create categories, sub-categories.
• Allows you to have more than one warehouse location (as I do).
• Automatically creates invoices when you pull inventory (has several different ‘sales’ settings; for rental and resale for example).
• Doubles as a client database very useful for marketing
• Pulls stats and data to show activity graphs based on virtually any criterion you desire.
• Network compatible without having to purchase multiple keys
• Automatically notifies you when you’re running low on a certain stock item.
• Allows you to export to excel and other programs.
  

This software is very easy to use, versatile and robust. It has a virtually limitless stock quantity.  You don’t have to be a computer type to pick this up!  Fellow stagers, even those of you with relatively small stock or no big furniture; this software is a ‘no-brainer’!  The invoicing, reporting/productivity tracking, and client database tools alone are worth the $189 you pay for the software.  And although I considered purchasing the wireless scanner locally so that I wouldn't have to wait for it to be shipped, I found that computer stores in my area charged in the  region of $400-450 for the scanners, so I opted to wait for the flic scanner. Besides it looked so much sleeker! Check it out! The scanner also had a better cache, but there's supposedly one coming out in the next month or 2 that will have a 4,000 item cache.

Should you decide to purchase please let Lucy know that you read my blog on Active Rain! 

Happy Staging!