Check out/check in - Validating an inventory.

colonel00

Ok, so I'm trying to use Smartsheet as part of our employee move process.  Basically, in the past we've use a paper form to inventory what a person has (PC, monitors, chair, boxes, etc) and then use the same inventory to validate that the correct items arrive at the new location.

So, I've created a sheet that will capture the necessary information and I have a form setup to facilitate the input of the info.  As far as this goes, I'm really happy with my new ability to gather the data.

What I am stuck on is the "check in" process.  Once I have a sheet full of data, I'm struggling with how to validate that the items at a certain location match what the inventory sheet has.  Yeah, I could just scroll through the sheet but when we are talking about moving hundreds of people and numerous people on an inventory crew, this isn't feasible.  

My first thought was to have a form generated based on the collected data that could be used to check things in.  However, my understanding is that Smartsheet doesn't really support this.  

My next thought was to have the "check in" team go through the same inventory process.  This would create a second sheet with similar information.  I would then need to have the sheets compared and discrepencies identified.

I hope what I'm trying to do makes sense and I'd love to hear some suggestions on how to make these ideas work or any new ideas on how to make this process work.

Thanks

Isaac Jose

Hello colonel00,

Thanks for your post! If you had two different sheets that you planned to compare, it would be pretty difficult to find the discrepancies. You could theoretically create a report to look at both sheets and sort the report by location # or employee name so that the employee intake sheet and the corresponding check-in sheet rows are displayed next to each other in the report, but there wouldn't be any conditional formatting to make discrepancies easily identifiable.

My idea below would ask the "check in" team to use the intake sheet as their reference when moving everything to the new location, but it would utilize Alerts and Actions so that each employee verifies whether or not everything was moved correctly.

First, your employees would fill out a form with their email address in a contact field, where they're moving from, where they're moving to, and a checkbox or dropdown field for each item that should be moved. The form can also have a hidden Date field which automatically populates every row with the date the move should be complete and the employees move to their new location. Once this intake sheet is filled out, you'll have a full list of everything that needs to be moved, which you can sort by location number or employee name.

You can then insert a checkbox column (not included in the form) for "Move Complete." With this, you can create a filter or report to display rows that haven't been moved yet. This filtered view can be used as a reference for the move team. When a mover finishes moving things to a new location, they'd check the checkbox for "Move Complete." You could also have a second checkbox for "Move Complete with Discrepancies" and ask them to enter a comment with the discrepancy information, if necessary.

You can then create an Approval Request driven by the hidden Date field or by the "Move Complete" checkbox so every employee gets an email when the move is complete to confirm that everything is correct. For the approval request, you can create custom buttons such as, "Everything is correct" and "Something is incorrect." You could have a custom message that says, "We've moved everything to your new location. On arrival, please confirm that everything was moved correctly. If there's anything incorrect, enter a comment to note the discrepancy and submit it as "Something is incorrect."

From there, you can use Conditional Formatting or build a Report of rows where "Something is incorrect" or "Move Complete with Discrepancies" is checked so that you have a live list of people that need corrections.

Resources for all of the features mentioned above can be found here:

• Collect Information with Web Forms https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/522221-collect-information-form
• Alerts and Actions: Approval Requests https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/2476191-automate-your-work-alerts-actions
• Report on Data from Multiple Sheets https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/522214-creating-reports
• Conditional Formatting https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/516359-conditional-formatting

I hope this helps!

Kind regards,

Isaac J

Smartsheet Support