Binary Formations Blog

Are you adding multiple items that are very similar and don’t want to fill in every field for every item?  Or perhaps want to make the same change to multiple items without having to update each item separately?

It’s easy with Home Inventory!

Let’s take the example of adding a box of brand new matchbox cars just purchased at your local toy store.

First add an item for each car but only fill in the information that is unique to the car, for instance in the following example the only item filled in is the ‘model’.

Next, select all the items that were just added.

To select consecutive items in a list click on the first item in the list you are interested in. Then, while holding down the shift key on your keyboard, click the last item. Home Inventory will automatically select the first item you clicked on, the last item you clicked on, and every item in between. If you wish to select multiple items that are not grouped together in the list, you can hold down the Command (⌘) key while clicking an item. That item will be selected without deselecting any previously selected item(s).

When multiple items are selected, double click to edit.  Enter the value for the fields that should be the same for all the selected items and click update.  In this example we updated the make, location, condition, purchased,  date, and price.

All items are now updated.

I tried to post this tip last week, but had some problems with the blog and ended up losing the post. Anyway, this week we’re going to get into a somewhat obscure feature of Home Inventory 2: Text Receipts.

Being a true geek I try to buy anything and everything online, wherever possible. When I was developing Home Inventory 2, this presented a bit of a problem. Many times my purchase would arrive with only a packing list inside. The receipt for the order would be sent via email or displayed as as web page when I completed my purchase. Home Inventory allows you to add receipts (and photos) in several different ways: through image files, by dragging and dropping images from an external application into Home Inventory, by taking a still picture with your Mac’s iSight camera, or by scanning them in with a scanner. I could use the first method to add a receipt for an online purchase by selecting the Print option under the File menu in my email client and then saving the receipt to a PDF file, which I could then drag and drop into Home Inventory. This works, but seems a bit clunky to me.

These receipts were really just rich text, for the most part, and what I really wanted was to be able to select the receipt contents in my email client or web browser and copy and paste or drag and drop them into Home Inventory. Thus, the idea of text receipts was born.

To add a text receipt to an item in Home Inventory, click the Receipt button in the Bottom Button Bar of the Item Information Area:

This will bring up the Text Receipt Panel. Next, select the contents of the receipt in your email application, web browser, or wherever else the receipt is stored. To get the receipt content into to the Receipt Area, you can take one of two approaches: copy and paste the receipt contents or drag and drop them.

To copy and paste the contents, choose the Copy option under the Edit menu in the source application (this would be your email application, web browser, etc). Next, click the box immediately below the text that says Paste or drag your receipt contents to the box below in the Text Receipt Panel in Home Inventory to make it active and then select Paste underneath the Edit menu in Home Inventory to paste the receipt contents.

To use the drag and drop approach, click on the selected receipt contents in the source application and, while still holding down the mouse button, drag them over to the box immediately below the text that says Paste or drag your receipt contents to the box below of the Text Receipt Panel, then let go of the mouse button. The receipt contents should appear in the Receipt Area:

Once you’ve added your receipt content and (optionally) given the receipt a label, click the Add button to add the receipt to the selected item.

This post is the first in a series on using Home Inventory. Every week or so we will take a feature in Home Inventory 2 and explore some of the different ways it can be used.

This week we’re going to take a look at one of my favorite features in Home Inventory: dated notes. This is of those simple features that has turned out to be far more useful than I would have imaged when I first implemented it when Home Inventory 2 still in development.

As you might have guessed from the name, a dated note is a freeform text note with an optional date. You can add as many dated notes as you want to an item, location, collection, or policy by clicking the Add Note button along the bottom of the inventory window:

If you’ve read the old Binary Formations blog or followed us on twitter (@BFormations, in case you’re interested), then you probably know I’m an avid guitar player. One of my favorite guitars is the Fender Stratocaster. I have three of them and like a lot of ‘Strat’ owners, I love everything about those guitars but the electronics. My geek gene has left me no other choice but to modify them.

By now you’re probably wondering what guitar modification has to do with Home Inventory. That’s an easy one: I’ve been using the dated notes feature to keep track of these modifications. Each time I make a change to a guitar I add a new note in Home Inventory so I have a record of what was done. Like a lot of guitar players, I like to know what changes an instrument has undergone over time. I like to know its history.

Here’s what some of those notes look like for a 2002 American Stratocaster I have:

Notes on my guitar 'mods'

Dated notes aren’t just for guitar players. I’ve had several customers tell me they use them to keep a record of the repair histories for their items. In our house we use dated notes for locations to keep track of renovation work and the colors we used to paint the walls (which is always helpful to know when you have do the inevitable touchup). For policies, notes provide a nice way to keep a record of your claim history and policy changes.

We’d like to know how you are using Home Inventory. If you have a tip on using Home Inventory you want to share with others, send us an email at tips@binaryformations.com.