Boxflow: Inventory Tracker

I think this app is amazing, but it would be really useful to have a Mac App! I use my iPad as a companion and it works great, but some people don’t have iPads and this would be a great way to expand your target audience.

Took this on a test drive as I seek a new tool for keep track of a constellation of things from consumables like medical supplies to tools, kitchen items, and music gear. The UI appears to be nicely designed, blending well with the feel of iOS. It is also fairly easy and intuitive to set up templates, tags, locations, and so on (though I would have liked to see more icon options—maybe including emojis). The data use and privacy policy are more palatable than options like Sortly, which makes extensive use of identity-linked data. The option to buy a lifetime license is also quite nice. Lots of potential. However, that’s where the pros seem to end for me, and that’s pretty far short of what an app like this needs to be able to do to satisfy my uses for it. The problems I’ve identified so far, in a nutshell: • Search by barcode/SKU doesn’t work (exact matching enabled). • Data export does not include photos. • Items of the same type can be put into folders but they cannot be grouped for overall quantity across entries/boxes/locations. The last problem seems pretty fundamental to the way the app is structured. Inventories tend to be nested nested (e.g., items inside boxes in drawers at locations). Let’s say you have 10 boxes of your favorite chocolate bars. Each box has 5 bars. Three of the boxes expire in a month, 3 expire in 4 months, and the other 4 expire in a year. Each box has a bar code, which you can scan when adding the item. So to inventory these chocolates you would want to be able to track the boxes, so you can eat the ones expiring sooner before eating the ones expiring later, and the overall quantity of the bars (50). Unfortunately, this app does not allow you to do this in a useful way. You could enter each box as an item, use the handy SKU barcode scanning feature, and track the quantity of chocolate bars in each box. And you could add the expiration date as a custom field. But then you will not see the total number of bars across all your boxes—only the number of bars in each box. Moreover, you will have to have a distinct name for each box even though they are the same (other than the expiration date). You could instead enter the chocolate bars as one type of item with a quantity of 50, ignoring the boxes, but then you cannot distinguish subsets of bars based on properties like location or expiration date. Perhaps there’s a workaround I haven’t figure out yet, but the lack of a hierarchical structure is pretty glaring. It seems like

I haven’t had to use in over a year and I cannot find where to enter quantities. I do remember it being difficult not just enter the name and location but going down many steps to enter 1 in the quantity. I don’t want to use this but my boss does.

I love this app but I have a question: is there a way to export how much is in stock for each item?

Only the issue is I cannot find item from search icon until you go to individual storage and search. Or else you have to scan the item.

Templates cannot be deleted and templates are forced to use default fields instead of building them with just custom fields.

I have always had a hard time keeping track of purchases but this app makes that a thing of the past.

Soon as I opened this app, never clicked sign up or consented to a transaction of any sort, they want 100 $for a year subscription, and when I tried to delete the app, it was super difficult, and As I did that, noticed my name was on a subscribed list! 100$ for a folder… really?

App and customer service is amazing! Great way to stay organized if you have lots of stock and multiple storage units. Super fast response from the customer service team. Keep up the great work!

This used to be a great app for organizing inventory for online sales, but imagine the horror of discovering your 40 collections with over 6,000 units was no longer alphabetized and having to scroll and scroll within a collection to find anything. Adding insult to injury, unable to add, edit or move anything. The only suggestion was to reload the app. With such an extreme update a guide would have been nice.