Repair Shop Inventory/Invoicing Software

[T9c]

Are any of you with repair shops using software to invoice customers and keep track of inventory? If so, what do you use?

I've been using Aynax.com for a few years at $10/mo. for invoicing and it works great, but there is no inventory module and when I asked them they weren't interested in making one available. Filling in a blank form, actually line items for every repair is getting old. It be nice to select a drop down or search with auto-complete and the prices auto-filled, etc.

I recently bought Access 2013 and using the included Northwind Traders "Goods" sales/invoicing/inventory, etc. system, but it's built for sales and shipping those sales. I've tried modifying the tables and forms to better suit a repair business, but not having much luck. The workflow in Northwinds is right on, but there's just so much going on with the "new" web based database objects and forms. For instance, there's no way to view table relationships, which is critical to making changes to the various tables and forms. Eventually I might learn Access well enough and with some help from the few Access forums get Northwinds how I need it, meanwhile...

I've demoed WorkTracer by GrenSoft and it's pretty impressive, but expensive, US$280. Nice though!

[km6xz]

I have used purpose built systems and written my own and both are compromises but workable. There was a shop system written in compiled basic and using the JET db engine from Access called TekServ that was $1000 in late 90s and it worked really well for a large shop with 12 work stations hitting the database plus the office and counter. That is pretty much the limit for Access which was never really intended for multi-user networked systems. After that system stopped being supported and I needed a system with a future(one of its limitations was that it could only work on old versions of Windows). That one did everything from generate parts orders, and inventory control but related manufacturer part numbers to generic numbers so when it automatically filed warranty claims, it used the correct brand's in-house part number. I still have a copy and a DB with 60,000 repairs in it but the finding a copy of Windows 3.1 is not my interest.
I would suggest moving to a real relational database, so much more secure, and corruption free. Access is great for small tables but when it grows it becomes more susceptible to corruption. MySQL is excellent and free with a lot more industry and developer support. The odds are very high that this forum uses it and every other forum and most shopping carts you see on the web or in businesses. PHP is the preferred scripting language for it and lots of development platforms are out there to aid in building complex forms and reports.
I built a system for my small shop here a year ago that was intended to be expandable and on-line for many current users, sort of a cloud based repair system where shops could subscribe and combine orders for bulk foreign shipping, and where thousands of past repair symptoms and solutions could be searched by model or symptoms. I got it working but needed to translate the entire site to Russian and that has not been done.
The separate tables counts to 154 now where data is well normalized which is the strength of relational databases. Access is a proprietary format of a quasi flat file system that allows symbolic relations. So it is hard to use that data outside of the Access environment.
If you are not into coding and just want to design it, you can do amazing things with platforms like CodeCharge Studio from YesSoftware, and even use your current Access db to great any forms, reports and displays you want without coding.
My latest project is to change the system to be responsive, meaning it reconfigures based on screen size so it is usable on a smart phone, tablet or full computer screen. That requires dumping tables in html markup and using CSS DIV. Tables are the normal way of formatting tabular data so it is not a trivial task. I just finished building a shopping cart for my other new business, a one page checkout form AJAX and multiple payment options. That was all done with PHP server side, JavaScript for client side, html and CSS. I am not even a programmer, but learned how to get things done for my various businesses since my first business system for my recording studio installed in 1982. Even very basic computers and software were really expensive back then. The accounting package cost $3500 in 82 dollars and it did 1/10th of what any $75 accounting package costs now.

I just looked at the web site for Grensoft and see their program is pretty extensive but from the looks of the very old fashion 1990s web site it is probably pretty crude so wonder about the product, no screen shots or images at all. $280 is a reasonable price for dedicated specialty software.

[T9c]

Thanks for your reply. That CodeCharge Studio looks pretty cool. I'll download the demo and poke around on it. My needs are really very simple, but some elegance and automation would be nice, well required actually. That's why I like the Northwind db, but it's geared for sales only. I've started stripping down the tables and modding forms in the 2007 version, which is desktop based instead of web based. I'll probably have the best luck with that. You're right about WorkTracer; it looks very old, but even it was way more than I need. I do have some experience with databases like dBase, FoxPro, Access 97 and was even a SQLServer admin for 4 years, so I'm at least quasi-familiar with the SQL language, but Access 2013 is a whole nuther animal. Things like VB give me a headache.