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Show HN: Online Inventory System for Individuals & Businesses - Want Feedback

8 points by cbeley ↗ HN
While working as a Unix Systems Administrator (I still do, just with much more limited hours), I use a horrible piece of software called Netdoc (by Brady) for network documentation. It always confused me how something so expensive could be so horrible, so I set out to make something better. After a bit of development and research, I realized inventory software in generally was pretty horrible, so I changed tracks a bit so my software could be useful to everyone from IT professionals to those wanting to keep track of their personal book collections (And be at a price book collectors can afford). A year later (ie: now-ish), I released a free public beta of my better solution to both network documentation and inventory in general. So now, I'm looking to get as much feedback on it as I can to make it even better.

The software is called Flextory, and you can create a free beta account at http://flextory.com, as well as find out more about the software.

Whether you like to just play with and break software or are interested in finding a new inventory solution, I'd absolutely love any feedback you can offer. Also, general feedback or comments about Flextory or even the state of inventory software in general would also be greatly appreciated. I'd like to make Flextory my full-time job one day.

EDIT: I just wanted to point out the Getting Started/Intro guide at http://docs.flextory.com/flextory_introduction , which also has a lot of screenshots and gives an overview of the ideas behind Flextory.

11 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 22.2 ms ] thread
nickler
Doesn't seem to be working for me, I get a 'sorry you can't do that' error.

Once it's up again I'll take a deeper look, inventory needs help and i look forward to seeing your solution.

cbeley
You need to log in first. Click log-in in the upper right hand corner. However, thanks for mentioning that, as you are the second person to point out a bit of confusion with that. In fact, I'll see if I can push out a quick fix to clarify that error.
nickler
Logged in now, thanks for the clarification.
cbeley
No problem. Also, I just pushed out an update that automatically brings you to the login screen if you are not logged in. Hopefully that'll clear some confusion.
nickler
Ok, I have to agree on the front end, and I can enthusiastically endorse bootstrap as a great start. The UX is rough, and I would recommend a lot of 'mom testing'.

Explore visual representation of the inventory, lists can be overwhelming, and push a new user right back to their excel spreadsheet.

I find that I'm really wanting clearer, and more compelling calls to action.

I recognize it isn't your target market, but I would suggest going to a small business owner that does regular inventory like a restaurant and take a look at what they use, there might be some interesting learning there.

I did it for many years using excel, and the constant need to catalog and maintain inventories is a legitimate pain that needs solving.

Good luck!

cbeley
I'll definitely be revamping the UI in the near future. Also, a random note, but there are a lot of subtle features such as no pages (you just keep scrolling), easy category exploration (items show up immediately on the right as you browse categories), auto-completion, table headers that always stay at the top, and other little UI things that don't show up until you have at least a few items in the system. It's many of those things that make it much more enjoyable to use compared with other solutions (at least, in terms of what me and a few others who have used it a bit more extensively think). I think the overall UI may be discouraging people before they even realize that all those other features exist. On that note, do you think putting a public demo that's populated with much more data would be a good idea? The biggest problem is that public demos are a bit outlet for spam and other abuse.

"I find that I'm really wanting clearer, and more compelling calls to action." -- I was wondering what you meant by this.

Also, I have been reaching out to small business owners and I actually have a restaurant owner who is interested. Whether he ends up using it or not, I hope he'll be able to provide some good feedback.

EDIT: Also, I was curious if you have any further thoughts about the representation of the inventory. Right now, it displays items as tables with the ability to customize what attributes you see while browsing (this can be changed by clicking your name in the upper right hand corner). When you say to explore other representations, are you saying to work more on just the displaying of the tabular data or coming up with some sort of hybrid-list-table thing?

nickler
Get in touch by email, I can help more by sending over some excel files of example restaurant inventories that are currently being used by the industry.

Restaurant inventory has clear needs that i can go into further, if you're interested in pursuing that market of course. I'm not sure they'll pay for it, and they're not the best early adopters, so I would hesitate to build a business model around them. That being said, take a look at http://www.scanitinternational.com as an example of one group trying to solve it.

rcamera
Add a "Show HN:" to the beginning of the title of this thread, and you will be more likely to get feedback. I will give proper feedback when I get more time to test it.
cbeley
Thanks for the tip! I made the change.
twog
One point of emphasis should be on your front-end, which is pretty weak right now. Heres a few tips.

Use a framework like http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/ or the under rated http://foundation.zurb.com/

If you're looking for something a little more complete, spend a few bucks and grab a theme from http://themeforest.net/

Something like this http://themeforest.net/category/site-templates/admin-templat... will make a HUGE difference on your products design and usability.

Lastly, I would recommend reading http://designforhackers.com/ and get a better understanding of general design aesthetics like font, spacing, color etc.

Good luck! You're off to a great start! If you want to chat about front-end, Im happy to help. You can email me through my profile

cbeley
Thanks for all the great resources. I will admit that design is not my strong point, but the backend and features are all there, that it's pretty easy to revamp the entire design. I'm going to look into twitter bootstrap and maybe paying for a theme or even finding a designer.

Also, I may very well send you can e-mail later on. Thanks a lot!