Using a Raspberry Pi for your own Inventory Management System

Using a Raspberry Pi for your own inventory management system.

An open-source, inventory management system written in PHP with a MySQL database has no problem operating on a Raspberry Pi. Initially, you'll only have local network access, but if you want to allow remote web access, you can.

In order to setup a web interface to access, view, and manage the content of your inventory management system you'll need to set up a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack on your Raspberry Pi and configure it to work as a web server and set up a basic website which you can access on any device on the same network as your Pi. This is a link to a nice tutorial for setting-up a L.A.M.P. server on your Pi, the WordPress portion is optional, you can stop after installing PHP.

If you plan on having access to your Raspberry Pi through the Internet, you'll need to configure your router for port forwarding and DDNS settings, or use a tunneling service to access your Pi through the web.

Install the Basic Inventory Management System Web Application

Included Features:

• User Management: Groups, Basic Profile, and Change Password
• Categories: For organizing products
• Products: Basic product information, title, quantity, pricing.
• Sales: Sales transactions are individual by product.
• Reports: Daily, Monthly, and Ranged Dates Sales/Profit Report

After updating the Raspberry Pi and setting up the LAMP stack, installation of the inventory application is relatively painless.

If you haven't done so, use apt to acquire and install the database software:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install mariadb-server php-mysql php-gd

When the installation is complete, run a simple security script that comes pre-installed with MariaDB which will remove some insecure default settings and lock down access to your database system. Start the interactive script by running:

sudo mariadb-secure-installation

Download the source-code package and then you'll need to extract the contents to the folder. Either rename the folder to the base name now or after you move it to the web root for Apache Web Server found at /var/www/html/

example:  sudo cp -R ~/Downloads/inventory-master /var/www/html/inventory

Use the MySQL/MariaDB command line to import the database schema.

Create a database named inventory and import the schema included in the project directory inventory.sql If you haven't done so, installation is as easy as:

sudo mysql -uroot

mysql> CREATE DATABASE inventory;
mysql> USE inventory;
mysql> source /var/www/html/inventory/inventory.sql

mysql> CREATE USER 'webuser'@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'p1r4sp';
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON inventory.* TO 'webuser'@localhost;
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Edit the /includes/config.php to match the username and password used to access your database.

The directory containing the project, especially, the uploads directory, must have write permissions on the system and let the web application be run using the www-data account by executing the following commands from the project directory:

sudo chmod -R 775 uploads/
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data *

Edit the header.php file lines #19 – #22 to suit the needs of your organization. e.g. change to logo
[project folder on server]/layouts/header.php
Same folder also contains the various menus used by the system.

Edit the CSS at line #85 and #102 to reflect the needs of your organization. e.g. background color
[project folder on server]/libs/css/main.css

Using the Inventory Management System

• Secure the default accounts with a change password.
• Create a user account for each person using the system, including yourself. Optionally upload a photo for the user.
• Add Categories – you'll need to add at least one category before you can add products.
• Add Media before you Add Product if you want to associate a photo when you Add Product. Otherwise, you can elect to have no image and updated later.
• Add Order – before you try to Add Sales.

Improvements

These are the improvements I've added for my own system:

• Delete confirmation popup before delete actions
• Description column for products
• Location column for products
• View products by category
• Add sales from list of products – remove selected from list.
• Add/Edit/Delete Sales also updates product's quantity available
• Order Management for all sales – All sales must be associated with an order number
• View Sales by Order calculate total
• Delete Order: deletes all sales associated with order AND restores quantity/stock
• Stock: Inventory Management for all products – Log of increase/decrease stock
• Add/Edit/Delete Inventory also updates product's quantity available

More Improvements

• Stock Report containing current status of inventory by category
• Currency Format Support allows for international currencies
• Add/Edit/Delete Customer Details for relationship management
• Search by Customer when adding new order
• Sales Invoice by order
• Inventory Stock Picklist by order
• Add Sales by Product SKU number

View Improved Version Source Code on GitHub