11 real-world people' problems to solve from Reddit (digest #2)

Hi! In these digests, I collect problems people talk about on Reddit. They're mostly automation requests, but it's what people like you can simplify.
Automation problems are my favorite ones because that's where people want to save their time, money, or other resources. And they directly say so(e.g. "I do X reports manually"). If you want to find such posts on Reddit(and on other sources too) by yourself, you can use the following queries:

• how can I automate, how can we automate, how to automate, how do I automate;
• can be automated, should be automated;
• how to streamline;
• doing this routinely, manually, a lot of routine;

So, here are the potential opportunities:

Inventory/Orders Automation
Hello! I work for a company that sells trees, and I'm trying to automate the orders/inventory process. We have an inventory sheet with quantities of trees that I update when we get new trees delivered, and an Order sheet that our consultants update with trees clients would like. I'd like to have it built so that on the Orders sheet, you can select a tree that's in the Inventory sheet, ie "Orange - Washington Navel" , select the quantity and have that number of trees subtracted from the Inventory. I can't quite figure out what formula or method I should be utilizing here, so if anyone has any advice of where to start or what formulas might be useful to me that'd be rad, thanks y'all!
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How to scan a barcode into excel and have it print at the same time?
At my job in manufacturing, we are frequently using barcodes to label and keep track of products as they come in and out of our warehouse, and we use the Fishbowl inventory management software. Right now, we use Excel to make sheets with serial numbers on them to put on the outside of our crates, and then we use a free barcode generator online to print out barcodes and put them on the cartons for each individual product. The extra steps it takes to put info into the free website, save a file of that label, and then print it off adds a lot of unwanted time to the process. Essentially, I'd like to know if there is a way scan a barcode and have it print out from a label printer (we use a Zebra printer) and, at the same time, have it scan into excel. I've looked around, and can't seem to find a way to make it happen. Thanks in advance for any help!
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Help finding a simple inventory program to use with finding items on pallet racking
I have a business and we store items on pallets and currently when we need to find a pallet of items we go looking. We usually have somewhat of an idea where items are but we also only have 30 bays of pallet racking. We are moving into a larger building with about double the racking (60 bays) and as we move i want to have some sort of inventory system. We mostly sell on amazon and we have an inventory system in place for items we sell. However lots of these items on pallets are raw product not yet processed and not ready for sales yet. These are the types of products id like to keep track of with this software im looking for. Im thinking of assigning numbers to each bay and i would need software that I can easily use to find items. For example lets say i have pallet of items that gets delivered- id like to be able to enter it into a database so we can track it to "bay 9 level 2" for example. Id also like to set tags such as item brand and item type. Most software is way to complex for out needs. We dont need a cloud database nor do we need advanced tracking options. We need a simple database that is easy to use! So basically this is just for us to know what we have in house for raw product. Its not going to be linked to our amazon inventory of items we sell. I almost want to do it in excel just for simplicity but figured there may be a better option someone knows of. Any suggestions?
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Best way to automate multiple pivot creation and then PDF summary
Hi everyone, I have a monthly branch sales report that I am trying to automate as best as possible. The current process calls for manually splitting one raw data source (excel file) into 33 different sheets, creating the same pivot table for each and then saving that summary view as a PDF and emailing it to different target audiences. I have found a VBA code that automatically splits the raw data into 33 separate workbooks but I am getting stuck in trying to find a way to automate the pivot table creation and or PDF creation as well. I tried to use one pivot table and just filter accordingly to each different branch but that wont work as the reason the data is being split into different sheets is when applying the filters at top of pivot table they get filled in with only that specific branches information instead of having (All) as a filter option; there are 5 filters being used to display that information specific to that branch. Every VBA solution to create the same pivot table across different data sheets is to combine different data sources into one pivot table which is the opposite of what I want to do. Any pointers I can use would be greatly appreciated.
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How do you handle automating the quoting/sales process?
We're looking at cutting the time spent on getting quotes/pricing from vendors etc. on equipment and wanted to see what everyone else might be doing. Our process is very manual right now, most of the time is spent confirming pricing every time a product is quoted. We're a CW shop and know Sell can do the job but want to avoid that heavy investment, at least for now if we can. Ideally, we'd be pulling pricing real time from Place A and with it, our margins would adjust. For example an AP was $199 today and $229 tomorrow. If there was a 10-20% margin on the product then then it would just adjust automatically. Manually requesting pricing from vendors each time might be necessary but if there is another option then that would be great. Any and all pointers are appreciated!
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Can anyone recommend a camera that automatically uploads all photos to the cloud?
I run a small business and ship out product in boxes. I need to take photos of literally every box after it's packed and ready to go, and save those photos on the computer. The problem is many of my employees don't know how to use a computer, so I was hoping there is a camera that will automatically upload all photos taken to a cloud. It doesn't have to be fancy. I don't know anything about megapixels, but if I take a photo of a 12pt font piece of paper from 4 feet away I'd like to be able to read the text by enlarging the photo. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
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Changing Shopify inventory to work better with produce sales
I sell greenhouse vegetables & fruit through a site based on shopify. I am trying to find a better way to deal with inventory. We sell in specific quantity amounts so you might be able to buy tomatoes, for example, in 454g (1 lb) or 2.27kg (5 lb) quantities. It is cheaper for a customer to buy in larger quantities because it is less packaging and less labour to package it that way. Right now, to enter inventory, I would have to estimate that in the next few days we would sell, say, 70 smaller packages and 6 larger packages and put that many of each into inventory. But if the larger packages happen to be more popular, I have to go change my inventory throughout the day/week to reflect the remaining inventory. (Since we only package after orders come in, I don't actually have 70 small packages ready--I have a bulk amount that is ready to be packaged into whatever size(s) the customer orders... and with some crops they are still on the plant when ordered.) What I would like to do is to enter in inventory that I have, say 45kg (100 lbs) of tomatoes available to sell. As people buy the smaller sizes, it would take 454g off the total and remove 2270g from the total as they bought the larger ones. This way I only have to manage the whole category and not each item. The example I used is simple, I actually have many products and most have more than 2 sizes, but the point is that I would like to be able to manage the inventory by saying how many total tomatoes I have and have the computer keep track of how much of the total amount is left at any given time. Is there a way to do this natively in Shopify? If not, do you know of any aps that can be used smoothly together with Shopify that allow this to be done?
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Suggestions for e-signing contracts?
Hi, I have a web development business, and I'm looking for an easy way for my clients/prospects to sign contracts digitally. Currently, when I have a client proposal, I'll create the client contract as PDF document, and then just email the client a nice message and attach the PDF for them to review and sign. However, the client then needs to print off the document, sign it, and then either scan it or take a photo to send back to me, unless they have some sort of method of digitally signing. I have been exploring e-sign options to make that easier, and something I'm not quite happy with, is it seems like all the options I've found send out the document via their platform. So, instead of coming from me, the email the client gets comes from the e-sign platform, is in their format, and that kind of thing. I think my ideal state would be more like I could upload the PDF contract to the e-sign platform and indicate where the client needs to sign, but then instead of sending out the contract from that platform directly, I'd rather draft a personal email in Gmail so it comes right from me, and have some sort of custom link that takes the client right to the e-sign platform, where they can review the document and either click to sign, or, create a digital signature with their finger, mouse, stylus, whatever. Any reference points or suggestions at all? Thanks in advance!
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I run a film and photography business and need help figuring out an ideal inventory system
Hey Everyone! I have a growing photography and video business and we have a lot of gear. We are looking for an inventory system that is far better than the whole mess of spreadsheets that we struggle to keep up to date as we are very scatterbrained creatives. Ideally, what we are hoping for is a cloud based system with an app that we can create a better way of checking out and checking in gear. We don't rent to the public but I'd like to treat this as something that is as easy to use as a system that you could. We have shoots and each shoot is different so we usually just grab what we think we need off a shelf, pray that the necessary accessories are in the case and toss it into the truck. It's worked so far but I know it could be a million times more efficient. What I'm hoping for is the ability to create a checklist prior to a shoot based off our inventory and then under each piece of gear be able to have it's own check list for all of the accessories, even down to individual hardware. That way, I can check it out (to myself) and then before it goes back on the shelf after the shoot, check it back in. We've even thought of something that could have a bar code scanner, but that's not necessary. It'd be helpful for us to have an assignable dollar amount to each thing that gets added to the shoot list so we can bill the client accordingly. I am a very visual person, so something with a solid user interface would help us out tremendously. I'd love to have pictures of each case and it's components because we have so many random things that go to each rig we shoot with. If that wall of text made sense is anyone aware of a solid inventory software that can solve this problem? I was looking at sortly but the costs would quickly get out of control with the amount of line items I'd like to have. Thanks!
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Is there a media monitoring tool that isn’t fully automated?
One of my clients is having issues with their current vendor. We’re looking for a company that provides more of a service; sorting through the hits rather than having software auto-populate the mentions every day. There’s always a lot of messy data and the acronyms in the search results are often irrelevant and have nothing to do with the company.
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Recommendations on Experts who can do more advanced coding
Hello, I have a Shopify store that needs order printing automation to make my life easier. I've been on the platform approaching 3 years now, and I'm tired of manually printing orders and manually creating gift card messages that come attached to the product. Does anyone have recommendations for good Shopify Experts? I used a few shovelware companies to get some custom work done when I started, but I need some top notch people for what I'm looking for.
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