Expense Inventory App — Ian Dinsmor

Quick snapshot of the app dashboard, showing total costs, net sales, progress towards break even, and inventory.

The Problem

As someone who has several friends who release physical vinyl records, tracking your progress towards break even on a record release can be a scattered process. I spun up this app to consider the follwing:

Initial Production Costs
Shipping & Handling Costs
Software/Domain/Technology Costs
Tracking Record Sales on Bandcamp
Tracking % towards break even
Tracking inventory & shipping

The user can enter each production cost individually here.

The Approach

I originally wanted to create this app to have API integrations with Bandcamp and Pirate Ship, to automatically track sales and shipping, however, neither of those sites had API integration available. While the user needs to do their own data entry, this app allows them a customized solution where they can track their sales, their shipped units and inventory all in one app.

The user can enter their Bandcamp sales numbers, this includes custom fields for Bandcamp fees that are reported to the artist with each sale.

The inventory page allows the user to know how many records they have on hand, or track any items that may be out on consignment.

The user can enter and track shipped records on this screen.

The Outcome

While it would have been great to have an API integration to make the inclusion of sales and shipping seamless, I will continue to monitor API integration abilities with Bandcamp and Pirate Ship. I also have plans for the V2 app, where an artist can track individual releases as well as track their expenses/gains/losses on their cumulative discography.