Track inventory and items inside Trello

[#1]

I'm no accountant, and I don't sell any physical products, but I still found myself in need of a way to keep track of inventory. 

How? It all started with Paprika. 

 

Since getting a camper earlier this year, I've spent a good amount of time stocking things up in there so I don't have to bring so many things back and forth every time I use it. And it's worked pretty great, except I can never remember if I have paprika. 

And it became obvious I was not able to keep track when I looked in my spice rack and saw three containers of paprika 😂

So how could Trello solve this?

Naturally, I asked myself how I could use Trello to solve this. So I created a board with lists for the different categories of things I keep in my camper (yes, one list is called Spices) and cards for each item in that category. 

I also created a custom field called Quantity for storing—you guessed it—the number of that item available. 

This is a fantastic solution because next time I'm away from the camper and wondering if I need to bring paprika, I can open my Trello board (from my phone or my computer!) and see if I have paprika. 

This was already starting to be pretty useful.

Then I asked... How can I make it even better?

And then I kicked it up a notch. 

I added some simple automation rules that made this board even more useful by: 

✅ Sorting the list alphabetically every time a new card was added, that was items were easy to find

✅ Decreasing the quantity custom field by 1 when pressed one button on a card

✅ Adding labels to items that had a low quantity 

Watch this video to see it in action and set it up for yourself. 

But wait, I'm not an accountant and I don't have a camper. Why do I care about inventory? 

Maybe you want to keep track of items that you have in your kitchen at home, or a vacation home. Or maybe you want to keep track of office supplies so you know when to reorder. You could even do it with home cleaning supplies! It's a great way to have a digital inventory for ensuring you're never too low on something but also not buying anything unnecessarily.