Re: bar coding and portable devices

Al wrote:
> If I am not careful here, I will write far too much information, 
> compared to what you are looking for.

Al - I don't think you were careful enough!  :~)

Chick wrote:
> i'd like to give the
>stockroom staff a portable data entry terminal and have them enter
the
>transaction themselves. but i am running into interference from some
>parties who say that if i did this there would be no audit trail or
>verification of the transactions and quantities that were actually
>entered.

Luddites!  Currently, they can validate the paper against the entered
transactions.  How do they verify that the PAPER reflected the
quantities and items actually issued?  In reality, they CAN'T. 

That said, here are a couple of ideas:

1> Tweak the cycle count programs to check items that have recently had
transactions.

2> Use the paper to verify after the fact that transactions match. 
Have a query print transactions by work order, and validate it against
the papers.  Or have someone sample the papers and check the
transactions entered.  

Finally, there would indeed be an audit trail, the paper is still
available.  You can even keep a copy in a file, just not do the data
entry from it.

You need to be careful, however . . the sky might fall.