lumber inventory

jeepman · October 06, 2003, 08:07:16 PM

Does anyone know of a good spreadsheet to keep up with lumber? Notebook is getting full.

Percy · October 06, 2003, 11:28:25 PM

I built a spreadsheet in Microsoft Works that I used to use alot. I could email it to you if you like.......Meybe there is somthing on the net a guy could down load.... :P

woodhaven · October 07, 2003, 05:31:00 AM

What items are you looking for? I do a little programming, maybe I could build you something.

Jason_WI · October 07, 2003, 04:12:17 PM

For those of you who can't afford the Micro$oft verson of Office there is an alternitave.

Its called Open Office and will run on Windoze. Better yet it is FREE to download. Gotta love those Unix guys and there free mentality.

As far as I can tell it can do everything that Micro$oft Office can do.

http://www.openoffice.org/

Jason

Oregon_Sawyer · October 08, 2003, 12:12:32 AM

I wrote a spread sheet in Excell. It also figures board Ft.

I could send it to you by E-Mail I think.

oldsaw · October 09, 2003, 08:31:27 PM

much to build one. I have built Excel spreadsheets to keep track of my "too big" record collection (for insurance) as well as tracking sales/commission/% of quota at the office. Hey, a salesman has to know how much money he is going to be able to spend on "toolbox stuff".

woodhaven · October 10, 2003, 06:03:42 PM

I would still be interested in knowing what items and fields you would like to have. It might be something I want to build for my own use. Most store bought software will do "almost" what you want it to but there is always something you wish was differant or a another feature added. That is actually why I learned programming anyway. Never could find software to do what I wanted the way I wanted.

jeepman · October 10, 2003, 07:19:41 PM

Thanks to Percy for the spreadsheet and thanks to the rest of you for the ideas.
Woodhaven, what I was interested in was a sheet with columns for each common size of lumber and a board foot calculator. One can have a sheet for each species stacked and have their inventory at the fingertips without looking in the lumber yard to see if you've got 20 hemlock 8X8X10's. If you keep any lumber around, it would be of great use.

woodhaven · October 11, 2003, 04:46:38 AM

Would you use a real easy computer program or would you still use your spread sheets? It could all be done on one screen saved to a data base and printed. All the things you named would only require 4 or 5 buttons. Instead of having a sheet for each species you would just select it from a list. I will start working on something and post a screen shot to see what you think.
What would be helpful is to now is the sizes and species some of the other guys use as well.

smwwoody · October 11, 2003, 10:51:42 AM

What about grade

woodhaven · October 11, 2003, 12:04:02 PM

Yep,
Thats a good one !!

Percy · October 11, 2003, 07:19:19 PM

Heya Woodhaven
The spreadsheet I sent Jeepman was very basic but effective. Does bdft calculations and totals yaddayadda easily modified for pricing as well. What I think would be great, for me anyways is a program that you could enter the days cut into , plus the days sales, keeping an accurate inventory/net worth of whatever boards you have in stock.Also a log inventory integrated with "projections' of what you could expect to get from said logs. An added bonus would be invoice printing,tax caculations, and an automatic notification of old stock that you could 'Red Tag" and sell cheap to get the coin back in cirrculation. OOOOhhh boy, the more I think about it, the more usefull but complex it could be...now I understand why there are constant upgrades of software. Anyways I dont know dick about programming but I have an idea, along with many others here,of what would be needed for daily milling. If you built a dedicated, small sawmilling software package, reasonably priced, you might be able to sell it and subsidize your milling :D :D :D

Id be glad to throw you my ideas.....

The 'SMILEY" boss is enjoyin hisself these days huh??

woodhaven · October 11, 2003, 07:37:40 PM

Dang Percy,
This started out as a project I could do in a few days. Now you talking about a year long book keeping system. Don't have that kind of extra time right now as I am still cleaning up from the storm. I will start on the first part and over time see where it goes.

Ron Wenrich · October 13, 2003, 04:03:28 AM

A number of years ago I worked on a program that was geared more to the small to medium sized sawmill. It would take care of log inventory, lumber inventory and expenses.

Logs were a logs in and logs out by species, grade and size. You had a continuous log inventory. Lumber was the same thing.

Expenses tracked labor, fuel, insurance and anything you wanted to add.

I then put in a section for putting in sawing times of logs and log yields. From that, with given lumber prices, you could price the value of each log - lumber sawn vs expenses. It also accounted for sawdust and chips. It would help mills weed out logs that shouldn't hit the headblocks.

Then I added a "what if" category. There you could play with lumber prices, expenses and sawing time to see if added equipment made you more profitable. I wanted to take it one step further by going from logs to tree so it could be used as an aid in buying standing timber.

An outfit up in Maine had a similar program that was for sale, so I quit on it. There's tied in handheld units which eliminated a lot of input. They were a couple of steps ahead of me in technology.

A simple product could be developed for weekenders and small mills.

woodhaven · October 14, 2003, 04:07:53 PM

Ron
What programming language were you using and do you still have the program? I currently use C++ and Visual Basic 6

edsaws · November 28, 2003, 08:31:04 PM

Hi all i was reading some old posts and came across this one and was wondering if someone wouldn't mind sending me a copy of a spreadsheet that could tally up the inventory. I'd really appreciate it thanks