Hello to the community,
Awesome tool, need to wrap my head around it still, but surely need to add inventory/stock to cover my needs.
We are using Asana as a project management tool and loving it.
We are an online publisher and we need to also add some basic (ad) inventory management to the mix.
We’d love to build something around Asana since we are comfortable with it, maybe via Zapier or the API, or anything really.
Any ideas?
Best,
Jon
Hi @Jon - Welcome to the Community! I’m the Community Manager at Asana. I’ll be happy to help and I know other people will, too.
For starters, I recommend that you visit these Asana use-case examples:
For integrations, @Sara and @Todd_Cavanaugh might have helpful things to add. Perhaps @Bastien_Siebman can recommend a template for you.
I suspect that you’d be able to do some (if not all) of this inventory management without an integration, simply by setting up a unique Asana workflow that matches your needs. Custom fields would be great for this. However, if you’re looking to sync up with an integration, this Zapier article is a great place to start. The article recommends custom fields for tracking things like inventory. You could also use a Google Forms integration if that applies to your work.
How do these things sound so far? What kid of processes are you looking for specifically that you think Asana doesn’t address on its own? Let’s see what we can come up with. 
Woah! Thanks for the elaborate reply Alexis. I’ll share with my team so we can consider these swiftly.
The process we need to manage is so:
There is some ad stock/inventory we can use at any given time
Example:
We can accommodate up to 12 sponsors in our monthly newsletter, one each month, so stock quantity in the beginning of the year will be 12.
As sales manage to sell some (lets say 3) sponsorship slots, each time a contract gets commissioned in Asana 2 things need to happen:
Does this make sense?
That makes sense to me - I would suggest doing something pretty simple:
If you wanted to get fancy with integrations you could have a counter for each project on incomplete or unassigned (unsold) inventory slots, depending on your convention.
This also can count as a reporting function - how many ads did X sell? See how many tasks are assigned to them in the ad project(s) for a given period, etc.
It depends on how much inventory/items you have, but if you don’t have a ton you could put all the ads into one project that the sales people could just check periodically. And you could use sections for each ad type, with the # of ads for it under each section.
You could get more in depth with custom fields, but you might want to start with the basics at first!
If you want a very simplistic workflow with the ad process -
Happy to help with Templana.com if needed!
Hi @Alexis, the functionality we need is pretty extensive, but if any of these functions could be handled by Asana, it would be of a great benefit to our operation. We already use Asana to manage the workflow of our inventory that has been assigned to our staff, however logging and tracking our inventory is handled by a separate application.
Logging incoming inventory
Assigning incoming inventory to different categories and teams
Assigning unique codes and designations to incoming inventory
Generating labels to tag incoming inventory
Assigning / Checking out / Checking in Inventory to staff
Tracking returns of inventory to vendors
Maintaining a database of past inventory
Hey @Alice_Newcome-Beill, I’m going to suggest a few things, but not knowing HOW this information is being received is a challenge so hopefully it’s useful:
Logging incoming inventory
Depending on how you’re receiving the notifications, you could set up an automation with Zapier. For instance, if you get notified about incoming inventory via…email, then you could set up something to auto forward those emails to a specific project. Certain people get notified of when tasks are added to that project, and then process/assign from there.
Alternatively if you get incoming inventory via say forms you could set up an integration with Zapier for the same thing, but also have it assign/categorize/tag automatically based on form fields.
You could also write something simple, but custom, if you got the data via CSV, where it goes to a server/database and then creates the tasks from there.
Assigning incoming inventory to different categories and teams
Categories/teams could be designated using custom fields, say it’s XYZ category and team, you’d select them from the dropdown (or enter it into the field) and then assign it to the designee for that team/category. If you used custom fields, you could run reports/searches that way.
Assigning unique codes and designations to incoming inventory
I don’t know of any way to do this without a custom script, but if you use an inventory system already that should generate this and then you can add it to a custom text field for the task.
Generating labels to tag incoming inventory
Same thing as custom fields/tags.
Assigning / Checking out / Checking in Inventory to staff
We do this for our production department, but if someone on Asana checks out gear, they have a task assigned and in our inventory/etc. project. The due date/range is for when they’re using it. Once it’s checked in, we complete it.
Tracking returns of inventory to vendors
You would probably use a tag for this within whatever task was created for the return workflow.
Maintaining a database of past inventory
Hello
I’m hoping you can help. Majority of my staff use the system as a project management tool for checklists and timelines. Although we have about 20+ Items of Inventory that we need to manage that we can ‘lend’ and ‘return’ using your calender option. I’ve had a look at your previous comments below but unsure of how it all works
Happy for you to email me direct or speak over the phone to discuss is further
Thanks
Marinella
Hi, has anyone so far figured out some sort of template for tracking inventory on Asana?
Viktor, I’ve been wondering the same thing.
Asana / Kanban is really meant to track work flow not inventory.
Thus if all you need to know is when to reorder something, when it has arrived, and when it was taken from the receiving area, you can just make a Kanban card and columns to track these things. But if you want to know how much of something you have on hand, then you probably need an ERP.
For integrating Asana with an ERP I found this: Asana + DEAR Inventory Integration: How to connect Asana to DEAR Inventory (appypie.com), but have never tried DEAR inventory - and would be interested to hear if anyone has tried and used it.
I use it to track all inventory in the company - goods in and assigning parts to pallets and then to bays.
It works very well and we integrate a QR code reader system using the task unique ID
Hi Jon, I know this post is pretty dated but I am curious if you were successful in creating such a template. This is exactly what I need.
Thanks
How do you do this can you elaborate ? How do you integrate with a QR code printer ?
Using zapier - stock levels are synced with a google speadsheet.
In that sheet is the task ID - from that, we can create the Task URL - the URL goes through a QR generator / Brother printer software - and prints a label for each stock item.
When that BIn is updated we scan the QR code and update on our mobiles - when custom field is updated to ‘restock/order’ an automation adds the task to the project ‘Orders to place’ - and then we re-order it.
Have you found a way to trigger the restock custom field automatically based on inventory level in the google sheet or other way?
I would LOVE a tutorial on this!
Yes, there are a number of ways to integrate inventory management into Asana.
Integration with Zapier: Asana may be linked to other inventory management applications like Google Sheets, Airtable, or even a custom-made system using Zapier.
Asana API: If your team includes a developer, they can use the Asana API to create a specialised integration that meets your unique requirements.
Asana Marketplace: Created by outside developers, the Asana Marketplace is a collection of pre-built integrations and apps. You might look for an inventory management program that interfaces with Asana on the market.
Tools for standalone inventory management: As a final option, you may think about employing a program for solo inventory management that works with Asana. TradeGecko, Zoho Inventory, and Unleashed are a few well-liked choices.
You can check B-Coder Castle for more…
I would also like to know how you do this. We are hoping to use Asana as an inventory tracker for items that come for events.
Could you please elaborate more in detail how you do this?
Thanks
Kris