Techucation

App Review: Inventory Scanner

I may be on a roll here as I am now posting for the second day in a row which hasn’t happened in a long while. It’s another iPhone App today that I think is available for the Android as well. It is also another app that will save you money.

X07Brainiac’s Inventory Scanner is a free app to download and install on your device that allows you to scan barcodes and add custom information. The data is housed on your device but if you want to download or export the data there is a $9.99 fee.

I plan to use this to scan computer inventories in my district, add a few custom fields such as local asset tag code, location, computer make and model and maybe a few other fields. Then I am going to export the data to a CSV file and pass it along to my finance department.

I know of some districts that are paying hundreds of dollars for devices that scan and export data so here is yet another example of how the iPhone saves you money and consolidates the number of devices you need to keep up with in your district.

Here are a few features listed by the developer:

This app automates these tasks in three easy steps:

1. Get the product-ID or name of the products via the integrated barcode-reader.
2. Now take all corresponding data to every product using the barcode-reader. The app saves all of the data in it’s integrated Database for further processing. Add their quantity, location or additional user configurable data
3. Export the collected data by E-Mail or access it from everywhere via the integrated WIFI-Export Server.

So you get a huge improvement in Data quality and you save lots of time:

• No more manually reading of numbers
• No more manually writing down of long numbers or product-id’s on paper
• No more hacking the data afterwards in a spreadsheet
• No more transcription errors
• Perfect consolidation of your data in just one place

Features:

• iOS 4 ready: Compatibility with iOS4 multitasking
• integrated Data Management tool:
• many editable fields for product information, e.g. quantity, category, locations…
• easily edit your predefined products, locations and categories
• user customizable fields
• auto fill of fields after scanning products you have already in the Database
• save location of your product with GPS-tag and automatic reverse Address lookup
• The app reads following barcodes formats:

UPC-A

UPC-E

EAN 8 

EAN 13 

ISBN 10 

ISBN 13 

2/5 Interleaved (i25)

Code 39 

Code 128 

PDF 417 

QR Code

Tracking numbers from UPS and FedEx.

• The app is optimized in reading as most as possible barcodes. In the settings you can optimize that by selecting which type or barcode the app should read.
• Add an image to every product
• Advanced data export modul:

Export your data in Text-Format (CSV: comma separated values) or in .XML

Export your data as ZIP

Export your saved images

Export the complete SQL-DB via DB-Dumb

• Send it to anybody via email from within the app
• Or fire up the integrated WIFI-export-server and access your collected data from anywhere via the internet.

With the next update 1.2 (coming soon) we will introduce ‘PURE SCAN’ so you can switch between ‘Continuous Barcode scan’ and ‘user activated area scan’

Available for iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4.
This version of the app is fully functional, but without exporting data enabled.

So you can try the app before you buy. If you like the app you can enable exporting data by buying the export module inside the app. So this is quite convenient - you don’t have to download and install a ‘FULL’-Version AND the app saves all your data entered BEFORE!