Next Inventory

Next Inventory is a full-featured inventory management component that replaces spreadsheets with a proper audit-logged system. Track assets checked out to staff, consumables being used up, and sellable stock across multiple warehouses. Scan barcodes with a USB reader or your phone camera, get email and browser push alerts before items run out, and report on stock valuation or movement over any date range.

Built on a modern frontend and a fully namespaced Joomla MVC backend, Next Inventory ships with role-based permissions, custom fields, unit conversions, warehouse transfers, and a public catalog view — all configurable without touching code.

🎯 Use cases

• 💻 IT asset management — track computers, monitors, and peripherals checked out to employees, with return tracking and serial-level history.
• 🏭 Warehouse & stockroom — manage consumable supplies across multiple locations with reorder alerts before you run out.
• 🔧 Equipment lending — loan tools, AV kit, or lab gear to named people and know exactly who has what.
• 🛒 Retail stock management — track sellable products with live stock levels and total-inventory valuation.
• 🧪 Laboratory & medical supplies — monitor reagents and consumables against low-stock thresholds.
• 📎 Office supplies — keep stationery and materials in check with a full usage history.

💡 Benefits

• 📜 Replace spreadsheets with a real audit trail — every movement is logged in an uneditable record, so you always know who did what and when.
• 🚨 Never get caught short — per-item low-stock thresholds trigger dashboard warnings plus email and browser push alerts.
• 👤 Full accountability — every asset is traceable to a named recipient, down to the serial number.
• ⚡ Faster work on the floor — USB and camera barcode scanning, quick lookup, and a warehouse-optimised UI with large fonts and tap targets.
• ⚙️ Configurable without code — custom fields, roles, units of measurement, and currency/date formatting are all driven from the settings UI.
• 📱 Works everywhere — a fully responsive React interface that installs as an offline-capable PWA.
• 🔄 Upgrade-safe & open source — GPL licensed, delivered through Joomla’s native update channel, with no deprecated APIs.

🧩 Features

📦 Inventory Management

Organise every physical asset, consumable, and product in one structured catalogue.
– Three item types — assets checked out to users, consumables used up over time, and sellables tracked for stock levels
– Hierarchical categories — a nested category tree with published/unpublished status control
– Multi-warehouse support — track stock across any number of warehouses or locations, with transfers between them
– Item images with thumbnails — upload product photos with automatic small and medium thumbnail generation
– Public frontend catalog — opt-in public pages let visitors browse available inventory with category filters

🗄️ Stock Tracking

Real-time stock quantities with every identifier warehouse workers actually need.
– SKU & barcode — store SKUs, barcodes, and serial numbers for every item with indexed lookup
– Decimal quantities — track stock to decimal precision for bulk materials, fluids, or partial units
– Units of measurement — define custom units with conversion chains (inches → feet → yards) and automatic conversion on transactions
– Low-stock thresholds — a per-item threshold triggers alerts and dashboard warnings when quantities run low
– Unit price & valuation — store unit prices for total-inventory-value reporting

🧾 Transactions & Audit Trail

Every stock movement recorded in an uneditable log — no more guessing who did what.
– Check in / check out — assign assets to recipients with structured name/email/department tracking and return them when done
– Add / remove stock — increment or decrement consumable and sellable quantities with mandatory reason fields
– Warehouse transfers — move stock between warehouses in batches with a draft/finalise workflow
– Stock adjustments — record damaged, lost, or found items with audit-trailed reasons
– Automatic quantity updates — stock levels update automatically when transactions save

🔍 Barcode Scanning

A scanner workflow built for warehouse and retail staff.
– USB barcode scanner support — works with any keyboard-wedge USB scanner, no drivers or configuration
– Camera-based scanning — scan barcodes through any device camera with the built-in web scanner
– Quick lookup search bar — type or scan a SKU, barcode, or serial to jump straight to an item
– Dedicated scanner page — large fonts, high contrast, and big tap targets for the warehouse floor

🔔 Notifications & Alerts

Multi-channel alerts so stock never runs out without warning.
– Low-stock email alerts — HTML emails to subscribed administrators when items drop below threshold
– Browser push notifications — Web Push (VAPID-encrypted) alerts delivered even when the admin isn’t open
– In-app notification centre — a central page with filters, bulk mark-as-read, and per-user preferences
– Deduplication — low-stock alerts throttled to once per 24 hours per item per user
– Dashboard widget — a permanent widget lists every item below its threshold at a glance

📊 Reports & Analytics

Know what you own, what’s moving, and what it’s worth.
– Stock valuation reports — total inventory value from live quantities and unit prices
– Transaction history — filter the full audit log by date range, item, recipient, type, or warehouse
– Stock movement trends — visual charts over 7-day, 30-day, 90-day, or 1-year periods
– CSV & PDF export — download any report as CSV for spreadsheets or PDF for sharing

🎛️ Customisation

Shape the system to fit your workflow, not the other way around.
– Custom fields — add dynamic fields (text, number, select, date, checkbox, colour, file, multiselect) to items, warehouses, and recipients with fieldset grouping
– Searchable custom values — flag fields as searchable to index them for filtering (hybrid JSON + EAV storage)
– Role-based permissions — granular per-feature roles (create, edit, edit.own, delete, view, manage transfers, and more) assignable to users or Joomla groups
– Settings-driven formatting — configure currency symbol and position, date format, decimal and thousands separators

🔗 Resources

📚Documentation – https://nextsoftware.dev/docs/next-inventory
📝Changelog – https://nextsoftware.dev/changelogs/next-inventory