Is It Monday Again Already?

I wait for the slabs I fused yesterday to cool enough to cut so I can get them into the pick-up kiln for this afternoon's roll-ups. We're out of coffee so it's truly a dreary wait. Over the weekend I finished the summer camp brochure, fused and slumped three orders, and did three roll-ups (for the first time since January) with Lee. Today I stare down the barrel of three ad copy layouts--Profitable Glass for my writing for them, Creative Loafing print AND Creative Loafing on-line. I also have to get my order into Bullseye today as soon as Judy finishes the inventory, ship two orders and do three more roll-ups. It's gonna be a full one.

Materials inventory. It is SUCH a pain to manage! I am determined to get the POS system finished for the supplies and classes part of the studio so I can slap barcode labels (not the expensive ones I bought for the department store, just internally generated ones) on everything and use a scanner to track inventory. Of course technology is only as good/useful as your persistence and dedication in using it, but I am highly motivated by the sheer volume of glass I now have. I used to have about a third of Bullseye's glass colors in sheet, 90% of the transparent frit in 5 lb jars and 5% in 1 lb jars, 90% of the opal frit in 1 lb jars and 5% in 5 lb jars. I also stocked 30-60 sheets of clear irid at any given time. Now I shoot for 100% of the sheet, 100% of the frit in 1 lb jars, 100% of the rods and stringer (I'm not there yet on the stringer and I forgot to put it on the inventory sheet for Judy to count *groan*), and the same quantities of 5 lb frit I had before.

Lucky for me the POS program I got (Checkout) automatically creates barcode labels for all your products, lets you print as many of each label as you need, and hooks up easily to a variety of barcode scanners (we still have one floating around here somewhere from the delicious library project...). I just need another eight hours in a day. Heck, I'd settle for four. Two even!

Those slabs ought to be cool enough now, back to the studio.