Kiddies, I have a word of advice for you:  Always, and I mean ALWAYS input newly purchased materials into some sort of inventory control system.  This may seem like a “no duh” piece of advice but I can tell you from experience that not doing this will result in frustration down the road.

I just spent the better part of my Sunday pricing a few pieces very inefficiently due to having to page through several lists of materials that I jotted down on paper when new materials were bought.  It wasn’t until a little while ago that I started entering materials into a spreadsheet onto my Google Docs.  You don’t need a fancy and costly program for inventory control, you can use any spreadsheet program.  I like spreadsheet because you can have one page for each type of material.  I have a page for pearls, another page for loose stones, a page for clasps, etc., etc., etc.  I like Google Docs because you can access your spreadsheet from any computer that has internet access.

I wish that I had entered all materials, the minute I got home with them, into a spreadsheet as one of the pieces I was pricing yesterday (the Morning Glory Necklace pictured in my previous post) took over an hour to price!  This is a lesson to me that as I go along pricing my work I will add any material that I am looking up retroactively to my spreadsheet.

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