[Fusion]

I need help finding the perfect Application.

My University Student Council started a consignment textbook store about 2 years ago and it has grown out of hand. Last year, we built a web application, that allows us to manually enter book, people to search and reserve online, moderators can change status from on hold to sold, etc... The great thing about this application is it is integrated with our campus database service for passwords, etc... so that it is very secure on our campus.

However, there is no accountability in this system and we have gotten very tired of manually entering books into a database because of the volume we are doing now. So here is what I am looking for.

I would like an Application that first lets me scan the barcode of the book. It will then attempt to find the info on Amazon, etc... If it does, great, if not, it should present the user with blank fields to be put in. Here is where it gets tricky.

Next, it should be able to export and upload that database to a web server. I have some really talented PHP programmers, so if it doesn't handle "a web application" that is fine, but if it could at least export the database and upload it, that would be awesome. Students would then search for the book online, and then come into pay for it.

A database field would be set that shows how many copies of said book we have in stock. We would then scan the book, mark it as sold, take the money, and then preferably the software would be accounting as well, and allow you to enter the amount paid etc... At the end of the day, it should be able to make a daily report on what was sold, how many, for how much, what time, what user, etc....

I know I am looking for an all-around app, book catalog, web application and accounting software, and that might be hard to come by, but I am hoping a developer has thought of this before and made it. If not, it would be okay to separate the web/catalog part from the accounting part, it would just require the user to update two programs when selling a book, which is fine, because that provides another layer of balances and accountability.

Any help would be appreciated. We could probably justify up to $2000, maybe more if need be, for this software.

Thanks everyone!

[Maelman]

Filemaker Pro might be what you are looking for. Although it can do none of that out of the box, you should be able to create your own solution with it. I have never really used it, but that is the kind of thing it is used for. Otherwise, try using magic. I always find that whenever I can't find a solution to a problem, magic always fixes it.

[larkost]

FileMaker Pro is a great app, but it seems to me that the tough part there is going to the be Amazon.com lookup and the barcode part... and those two are the tough parts.

Alternately, there is Delicious Library which does part of what you want. The lookup and barcode parts are top notch, and there is even a loan system (integrated with the AddressBook, which you might be able to hook up with you universities central server via LDAP). However it does not do what you want in the web or accounting sides (just does not think that way).

However, I do see two possible solutions: You could just use it as a front end to create the library of titles and then import them like you said (it produces a tab delimited export). Or you could try and tempt the developers with that $2000 into creating a custom version that does what you want.