Do you have ideas for a church to manage inventory, use and ordering of office supplies?

Question

I work for a large church and we desperately need to have a system to inventory, manage and track office supplies.

We need to establish re-order points and start understanding how the church year (i.e. fall kick-off, Christmas, Easter, summer) affects the need for inventory so what's needed can be onhand and ordered for the best prices. We have good suppliers, but people just order whatever they want/need so there's lots of money to be saved.


I would love to see forms, lists, software, written instructions, policy, rules, methods. You get the idea!

Also, has anyone tried using MS Access Inventory Management template for this?

Clarification: This church has 3 locations with nearly 150 on staff. Theft of office supplies is not at issue. Being a paperclip Nazi is not at issue. Having supplies there when needed is the goal. Thanks to those who have taken my questions seriously.

Answer 1

I currently use quickbooks to handle all aspects of my small business including inventory management although I also have several custom excel spreadsheets I have set up as a quick reference.

I like quickbooks because it does a lot more than just inventory management. It will do forecasting, budgeting, invoices, handle payroll and a million other things that Access just isn't designed to do. It is also a lot more user friendly than access is(although I haven't used the template you mentioned).

Answer 2

Since you work for a church please forgive me for smacking you down with the truth of life for the sack of the office works and maybe a few volunteers that work in the church office.

Is theft a Major problem with office supplies??
How much time each week do you plane on following throw on this little plan?? Nothing better than having a paper clip office Nazi running around to make a mountain out of a mole hill. Oh and do not be self righteous about being a good steward of Jesus money that has been in trusted to you. I doubt that Jesus would piss off some office worker over a paper clip.

Take the time you would be making a fool of your self and clock out early and use that money to buy office supplies.

Let ever one get what they want and have an office pool or closet and just fill it up each week.
Best of luck you sound like a great person to work with

Answer 3

you obviously do not run a business. Your inventory is NOTHING! And the rule of thumb is simplest process. Make a list of inventory with vendor and order every week. That's it.

Answer 4

Check out Intuit's Quickbooks. I have several clients using it to manage their inventory and checkbooks. I don't know what all it will do, but they seem happy with it.