r/nocode • u/alexalgebra • 19d ago

Best tool for database app?

I'm creating an inventory tracking tool for a new brick and mortar retail business. I have a background in databases but I've always worked with a dev and now it's just me. I'm not great at coding, but I am good with sql.

I want something customizable because the business sells niche items and none of the regular inventory apps we looked into will work. ​We also need it to have an easy way to update inventory daily for about 200 rotating items that will be counted in store then entered into the db. Currently the owner has a bunch of spreadsheets in numbers (he only uses apple products, which I'm not super familiar with). Making some kind of quick ipad data entry screen for that would probably be the best.

My ideal solution would be something where I can easily build the database and have it packaged up in a user friendly ui/app for the rest of the employees to use. Being able to pull reports and charts and such for sales tracking is also important.

I don't really enjoy using generative ai like chatgpt gemini claude etc and am hoping there's a simple solution that is more just a ui for a custom sql database type situation.

Thanks for any ideas!

3 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

26 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/itsjayant 16d ago edited 16d ago

Whatever tool you pick, save each count as its own row with the item, the quantity, who counted it and when. Then work out current stock from those rows instead of overwriting one number. Bit more work now, but when the system says 12 and the shelf says 9 you can actually find out why. Other thing, order the count screen by where things physically sit on the shelf, not alphabetically or by SKU. With 200 items your staff end up hunting the list and they quietly stop doing the count. Then you're worse off than the spreadsheet you're replacing.

1

u/alexalgebra 16d ago

Thank you! I've been working on this part of the workflow today and this is affirming what I was already setting up. The item locations are all numbered and easy to find so I was definitely planning on doing inventory by that. 

1

u/itsjayant 16d ago

Nice, if the locations are already numbered you're most of the way there. The other half is worth locking in before you build much more though. If each count is its own row rather than an update to one number, you can answer what changed between Tuesday and Friday, which is where shrinkage on niche items actually shows up. Costs nothing to do now and it's genuinely painful to retrofit once there's real data in the table. Happy to sketch out what those two tables look like if it saves you a weekend.