InvenTree

Helping small to medium sized businesses manage their inventory, plan future activities, and learn about their consumer market.

🍧  Story Time: "It all started with shaved ice..."

A few years ago, my friends and I participated in a fundraising event where we sold different kinds of food and beverages. One of the items in our menu was shaved ice, also known as "es campur" in Indonesia. Topped with syrup, fresh fruits, and condensed milk, paired with the hot Indonesian weather, it really quickly became a best seller in our booth, even in the entire event. For the second day, we made sure to restock the shaved ice, but we sold out not even thirty minutes in. For the third and last day, we got even more ingredients to sell more of our shaved ice but were still unable to keep up with the demands. We were just a bunch of students trying to raise funds for our class project with zero idea on how to run a business and no knowledge of inventory management.

Fast forward a few years later, I was having some shaved ice (Korean shaved ice) with my friends while talking about the difficulties of running a small business, especially for first-time business owners, and how easy it is for businesses to end up losing money in a society where competition is everywhere. This conversation led me to remember the shaved ice story from my early college years, which got me thinking, what if there was a solution that helps business owners, even those with zero experience of running a business, manage their inventories easily and effectively?

🔍  Digging for the Root

As per the wise say, to produce an effective solution, we cannot handle just the stems, but we have to tackle the root of the problem. In order to efficiently find the root, we used the Five Whys Method.

🖍️  Crafting the Solution

Now that the root of the problem has been located, we began the brainstorming step of our project. During the brainstorming process, we narrowed down the three key criteria that our solution needs to meet:

👤 Our Persona

Our main persona for this project is HERA Beauty, a beauty brand that focuses on creating sustainable and inclusive makeup. HERA Beauty has been around for almost one year now, but three months ago, one of their products went viral on social media and they experienced a sudden increase in orders. They have never had this many sales before and they are unsure of how they should go on with the business. They want to meet the customers' demand as much as possible, but they also do not want to overestimate the demand and end up with too many excess products.

🗝️  Our Key Features

We developed InvenTree as a solution for the demand vs inventory problem that we discussed previously. It contains all of the features needed to manage the inventory of a business while also keeping things simple enough for all users to use, regardless of background. We wanted to create a powerful but friendly platform that is efficient in inventory management.

Homepage

Users will be able to see their monthly account summary and account notifications in this page. We display the four main information that the user needs as a starting point for their next task which are: Revenue Goal, Quarterly Sales Performance, Stock vs Sales Comparison, and Account Alerts.

Inventory

The Inventory page shows the stock list of all the products the business sells. It displays the stock on a monthly basis. Users are able to edit the items' details, number of items, and also add or delete items.

👤  Frequently Asked Questions

To address important questions regarding the product and future steps, we have compiled the questions below: