My Coffee Beans Inventory Program for Palm and PocketPC

I created a specialized database applet for home coffee roasters, which lets me keep track of my inventory of various green coffee beans. I'm able to track my current inventory, past purchases, the ones I want to order next, roasting notes, vendors, and other important information.

The "Coffee Beans" database requires you to have HanDBase and runs on PalmOS and PocketPC. It has not been released to the public, but is available to individual home coffee roasters as "request ware."

The first image is the default screen on opening the database applet. I see the list of my coffees and pertinent data, such as crop year, size of the bag, my current inventory in pounds and whether it is regular or decaf.

Note the pull-down at the top, which currently shows Active -- this is the display of my coffee beans which currently have an inventory greater than zero.

In the second image, you see some the picklist for the various views that I have careated. Without scrolling, I can pick from:

• Active (I've got greater than 0 grams of this),
• Archiving List (all of my history, whether I have those beans now or not),
• Least Recently Updated (to help in updating inventories and spotting those beans that I no longer have),
• by Page# (sorted by page number in my roasting log)
• Inventory-Most (sorted by the most in inventory)
• Inventory-Least (sorted by the least quantity in inventory)
• Need to Order (those on which I have a check in the Need to Order checkbox)
• On Order (those ordered but not here yet)
• By Crop, Bean (sorted by year/season and then alphabetically by bean name)

Once I scroll down (using the down arrow indicated in the previous image), I see more display options:

• Active, Decaf (decaffeinated beans in current inventory, alphabetical)
• Active Total (all active, with a running total of inventory displayed)
• by Bean, Page# (sorted by bean and displaying the roasting log page number)
• Need (coffee beans that I've identified that I want to order)
• Archive-check (quicklist of all beans, including zero inventory, with checkboxes for Archive and Need)

Notice that the individual bean "Brazil Sul Minas" is highlighted. That's because I just looked at it before doing this screenshot.

Now, we see a screenshot of the individual coffee bean inventory data. The "Inv." tab is selected and shown.

We can see:

• Country,
• Crop (a pulldown),
• a button for a Comments page,
• the page number in my roasting log,
• type of bean (regular, decaf, other -- non-bean, such as chicory),
• size bag,
• order date (standard PDA date picker),
• last real inventory date,
• grams in inventory (weighed or estimated -- weighed was at last real inventory date),
• pounds (calculated from grams),
• source (Sweet Maria's for almost all of my beans),
• and a row of buttons: + to go to the next bean, - to go back a bean, and Dup to duplicate this record.

This next screenshot is a demonstration of the pull-down selector for the coffee bag size. This may be the size ordered, or may be the size in current storage (probably, the latter).

All popup menus in HanDBase allow the user to edit the popup values.

This screen is the Roast tab, where I can put any particular notes about roasting the beans. Usually this has Tom's recommendations from Sweet Maria's.

It also has two fields for page number — my log book had grown into a second book.

That's it in a nutshell. Again, it runs on a Palm or PocketPC and is a database "applet" that runs within HanDBase (http://www.ddhsoftware.com/).

HanDBase is available for Palm and PocketPC. There is also a Desktop version (HanDBase Desktop), which I think only comes comes with either the Plus or the Pro version. I strongly recommend the "Pro" version, which is all of $40 ($10 more than the regular version). The Pro gives you the ability to create screen layouts as opposed to just having field lists.

DDH Software has trial versions available. If you're thinking of going with the cheaper Plus version and not the Pro, be sure to try it first.

Anyone who is interested, holler! I'd be happy to share my Coffee Beans database.