Caesar
Contents
Caesar: Inventory and Invoice Software for Reading Rooms
This is an open source project to provide a free tool for Christian Science Reading Rooms to manage their inventory. It is based on the product list published by the Christian Science Publishing Society.
It is essentially a set of macros that run within a spreadsheet to allow a Reading Room librarian to record sales transactions and to have those transactions directly applied to current inventory records.
When a new price list is published, it will be referenced by the spreadsheet, causing all the prices to update, but leaving the inventory records intact.
Features:
- Integration with bar code scanners
- Easy and up-to-date inventory reporting
Requirements
- Open Office Calc (http://www.openoffice.org)
- Windows, Mac, or Linux
Availability
A test version is available now in the Download section.
Download
Beta versions
Stable versions
- Not available yet
Instructions
Caesar.ods is a spreadsheet that can be opened by OpenOffice.org spreadsheet. It has three tabs: config, inventory, and invoices. The main purpose of the config tab is to point to the productlist.xls spreadsheet that you have downloaded from CSPS. The productlist.xls contains all the prices and item descriptions that will be used by Caesar. Without it, the caesar.ods will have lots of broken link errors.
To determine the proper link to your product list, open both spreadsheets (caesar and productlist) and in a blank box in caeser enter an '=' and then click on a cell in the product list. See this link for more details (http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=75&t=3294).
After the config tab is properly filled in, the inventory tab can be populated with the inventory by entering the product ID of each item, quantity on hand, and location.
The invoice tab can generate an invoice in a similar fashion. Enter a product ID and quantity, and the invoice will determine the price and grand total.
Licensing
Licensing will be based on the Open Office Suite license.
Note about the name
The idea is to "render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's" while not being distracted from the main goal of publishing and healing.
Android app
I'm considering doing an Android app since many phones can do bar code scanning. I just have to manage the database of items in the phone.
The base database of items can be found here: http://christianscience.com/readingrooms/ordering/product-lists/
