Need a program for data entry

[Auctioneer]

Newbie here....Looking for a way to simplify and speed up a process. I am in the heavy equipment auction business. Part of my duties, when preparing for an auction, is cataloging the equipment to be auctioned. This cataloging involves making a list of each piece of equipment, listing specific details about that piece...ie. Year, Make, Model, Engine, Mileage, Hours, etc., etc. And then separate that information into categories...ie. Trucks, Trailers, Excavators, Bulldozers, Backhoes, etc. In the end, I have an item list in Word Document Format, that is categorized by type of equipment. I need the finished list to be in Word format so it can be transferred to a publishing program we use called Quark, to build our auction brochures. This is a very lengthy process. I also share this item list with the applicable co-workers involved. Would really be valuable if I had a data entry form in place. I would love to be able to place that form in a sharing network venue (onedrive, dropbox, etc.), so myself and any of the others could access the form from mobile devices to work in the field, make changes, share, etc......Would like to be able to have drop downs in the fields that I could customize......any help would be greatly appreciated. I currently run Windows 10 Home, and have Microsoft office 2013. Thank you in advance.

 

[purbeast0]

imo that would be a pretty simple/basic webapp, where you just enter data and it stores it in a database, then you could display it in a table of some sort. you could even allow sorting on each column. and you could look at all of the entries from previous auctions by date or something.

it would be accessible from anywhere too.

 

[Ken g6]

This feels like something to use Google Docs for. It looks like Sheets has a couple of helpful options. First, you can perform database-like queries on a Sheet. And second, you can limit field entries to a dropdown list or a range.

 

[Auctioneer]

Thanks so much !! I will check sheets out. I'm not to savvy on this type of thing. Seem to always get my computer full of unnecessary junk after I go on an adventure. haha. I will let ya'll know how it turns out.

 

[beginner99]

As and additional and unconventional way I will recommend KNIME.

It's a workflow /pipeline tool. Don't be scared by the flashy buzzwords on the page. What you can do is load csv or excel files, process them (sorting, grouping, filtering, etc...) and then generate an output.

It based on Eclipse Platform and hence integrate BIRT Reporting tool. It could actually replace your current reporting system or else you can set it up to generate a report in Word format to input into Quark.

I recommend it because a) it's free and open-source and b) you don't need any programming knowledge. Workflows are just different nodes connected to each other. Plus every user could just fill out an excel list (based on your template) locally and then submit it to say you. The workflow then reads all these excel files and generated the word document.

I think creating said Word document will be the most troublesome part in any case.

 

[veri745]

I think your use case might be a good application of Microsoft Access. I don't have much personal experience using it myself, but I know people that use Access for cataloging and managing inventories

 

[nakedfrog]

I think your use case might be a good application of Microsoft Access. I don't have much personal experience using it myself, but I know people that use Access for cataloging and managing inventories

That's what I was thinking, one of the first things I did with Access was set up data entry forms.

 

[Ken g6]

Access was the first thing I thought of, but as far as I know it doesn't do online collaboration well, does it?

 

[Homerboy]

I would first look into Google docs/Sheets for it.
The learning curve may be a hell of a lot more gentle than Access.
Otherwise, Access (as much as I hate it) would work.