Menu ▾ ▴

Home

webhick

Welcome to the PantryPOS project page.

This program has been a bit of a work-in-progress since 2008. Actually, calling it a "work-in-progress" is being generous. At first we didn't even know we needed something like this. The pantry we "inherited" was only servicing less than 20 households per week and donations were few and far between. And when we went to apply for 501(c)3 status, we discovered that we should be logging the value of all incoming donations and tracking them as inventory. Mind blown. That's when this kind of took on a life of it's own (also, the economy tanked and the pantry exploded). From being an Excel/QuickBooks hybrid system of operating a pantry we've become an MS Access/QuickBooks hybrid of operating a pantry. And don't get me wrong, I love my open source software but MS Access had that ready-made interface that made kludging so quick and dirty. And now we're paying for it. We need certain features and it's too bogged down to comply. Also, I kind of hate VBA. I feel like I'm being throttled.

Enter PantryPOS. This was what kept me sane while tacking on new features to MS Access. I kept telling myself, "This would be so much easier in Perl with a web app." And now that I've dropped 95% of the development on the MS Access version, I can actually devote time to getting this in motion and (hopefully) finished.

This project will seem stalled at times and other times have flurries of activity. Please don't mistake it for abandoned.

Please do not ask to have the MS Access database uploaded for viewing...or use...or to even laugh at. It's disgusting and should never see the light of day.

Possibly Relevant Questions

Why is this web-based? I don't want our stuff on the internet.

Second thing first, your stuff doesn't have to be on the internet. Web-based means that you'll need a webserver to run it. Webservers nowadays can run right on your computer and never be accessible to the outside world. They're also really easy to set up. XAMPP, for instance, is free and would contain everything you need, save for some Perl modules which are pretty easy to install as well.

Web-based software is installed in one place, no matter how many people use it. This makes updating the software much easier. You also use your web browser to use it, not a special program that you install. This means that if you have several computers on your network, you can all use the software at the same time without making sure you "have it on your computer." In theory, you can also access it on your mobile device (but not install it. I've never looked into installing a webserver on a tablet or cell phone, but it sounds like a bad idea).

You could also install it to an area of your website and work on things from home while the pantry is using it on-site.

What do you mean by... and why do I need it?

Donation Tracking

Every charity, for financial reasons, at least keeps a list of its donors and their donations. With PantryPOS, you'll even be able to track the food, clothing and household goods that people donate to you. You'll be able to look it up by donor, by date, etc. You can also automate the generation of detailed "thank you" letters or create a solicitation mailing to your existing donors. Better memorial donation tracking will be worked into the system by the first version release (currently, you just put the type as "Memorial" with the deceased's name, which works but isn't ideal) which will allow you to track all donations per the deceased and generate the acknowledgement letter to the family.

It may sound like over-kill, but since we have to track the value of ALL incoming donations - including the food - it just made sense to keep it all in one place. And let's face it, I'm not going to write 300 thank you letters by hand. And neither should you.

Inventory Control

As part of the donation tracking, you have an opportunity to list the goods you received. If you've done that, you've got to show it leaving the pantry. In and out. So, when servicing patrons you also have an opportunity to log the goods as they leave. Well, you'll be able to do all of that. You'll also be able to log items that have gone bad as being discarded, shift incorrectly labelled items to a different "label," check the stock status of all your items, manage problem areas (such as inventory that's gone into the negative), and do a year-end inventory. I gotta tell you that it's really great being able to tell at a glance how much canned corn you have in stock so you can see if you need to purchase more. And if the pantry ever burned down or something, you'll know what the value of the goods you lost was so your insurance company can properly compensate you for the loss.

Patron Management

You'll be able to pull up each household that comes to you, see everyone in the household, prove their residence, see how old everyone is, see all the times they've visited you, etc.

A lot of agencies require that you report certain figures, such as how many people you served and how many were between certain ages. I even had one want to know gender statistics. That was fun, since we weren't collecting that data at the time. While the generic USDA form will do, it sucks to have to add up the figures each time. Especially if there are a lot. Besides, when we switched from the USDA form to a more automated system with patrons having to prove residence, the amount of households that magically shrunk or altogether disappear was pretty amazing.

Volunteer Tracking

Right now, it'll just be allowing your volunteers clock in and out as they would at a regular job. This will enable you to see how much man-power your organization is using. It will also help track trends. Do you tend to get a lot more volunteers on the weekends? Maybe Wednesdays are big days? Maybe you're looking to hire for a previously volunteer-only position and need to know how many hours per week they'll average so you can budget the payroll.

Also, while we like to think that everyone is volunteering out of the kindness of their heart, that's not always the case. Our pantry takes in kids who need to fulfill their community service hours in order to graduate, adults and kids sent to us by the court system and a few other places. All these hours need to be signed off on. On at least one occasion, someone has tried to get us to sign off on hours not actually performed. We were able to tell this easily because we have volunteers clock in and out on a log list. PantryPOS will allow you to have volunteers clock-in and -out right on any computer at the pantry. If that's not much of an option, it will also provide you with a manual log list which can be input into the system.

Financial Reports

If you're a non-profit earning $25,000 or more (that's in goods and funds, people) you've got to be filling out a 990 or 990-EZ. It's kind of like a non-profit tax return but there's only tax due in certain circumstances (like operating a tanning bed...odd). Whether you're keeping track of your finances by hand, or doing it in a program like Quickbooks, you'll need a way to get all the financial figures out of PantryPOS to make it happen.

PantryPOS can give you daily summaries of all the activity in a format that would allow you to either manually enter it into a ledger, or enter it directly in QuickBooks (directions will be included). I'm a bookkeeper by trade, so I know what needs to be done to make that work (I also know how to operate a manual ledger). Ideally, you will simply print your daily summaries and hand them to your financial person. It will include all the income, expenses, and changes to your inventory so they'll have what they need to do their jobs.

From there you'll be able to see how your pantry is faring. Because PantryPOS doesn't track any checks you write, we can't generate a Profit & Loss, but with the figures your financial person will get they'll be able to do so with greater accuracy.

Wait a second, how complicated does this really have to be?

The bare-minimum proposal

With the way PantryPOS is going to be set up, you could:
Track your all your donations, but for the goods just guesstimate how much the donation was worth - but you won't be able to use the inventory control. For your patrons, you don't have to track anything about them. At the end of each month, quarter or year you'll have to look at your inventory and guesstimate what it's actually worth so your financial person can make an adjustment to your books showing the value of what you handed out.

But if you're doing that, then don't bother with PantryPOS because it would be overkill for what you need.

what we do

For every donation that comes in, we create a donation sheet with the donation number (we've switched away from putting down dates and donors names since people can't spell anything right these days). For each usable item in the database, we look up the item number (let's say it's a 15 oz can of corn). In this case, it's 15-152. 15 is the Veggie category, and 152 is the number within that category. The number's a bit high right now because I did some renumbering. We plug that into a price gun and label the can. Then we write down 15-152 on the donation sheet and list how many we got. Later, the donation would be input into PantryPOS. When we hand food out to people, we have an intake sheet where we mark down what they took. So, when a 16 oz can of corn leaves with one of our patrons, 15-152 is written down on their intake sheet, which would later be input into PantryPOS. You could of course receive your donations directly into PantryPOS, provided you have a computer available right then and there to do so.

Utilizing existing bar codes is planned for a later release.