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 interface that installs as an offline-capable app.
• 🌗 Comfortable in any light — a built-in dark mode that follows your Joomla admin theme, with one button that switches both together.
• 🧩 Only the features you want — the App Manager switches whole areas off from one screen, and never deletes a thing.
• 🔄 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
- Built for the warehouse floor — large fonts, high contrast and big tap targets throughout the scanning flow

🔔 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 — encrypted alerts delivered even when the admin isn't open, signed with your own keys
- 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 driven by one date range with last 7, 30 and 90 day and this-month presets
- CSV export & print-ready reports — download any report as CSV, or print it dark-on-white even from dark mode

🎛️ 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 a field as searchable and filter on its values like any built-in field
- 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

🧩 App Manager

Turn whole areas of the component on and off, without touching your data.
- Ten switchable areas — transfers, adjustments, reports, warehouse overview, units, custom fields, notifications, quick search, offline app and demo data
- Nine always-on core areas — items, categories, warehouses, the stock ledger, recipients, roles and settings can never be switched off
- Nothing is deleted — disabling hides an area and refuses its requests; switch it back on and everything is exactly as you left it
- Safe by default — an update never switches anything on for you, and a database problem can never black the product out

🌗 Interface & everyday use

Built to be lived in, not just configured.
- Light and dark mode — one button re-themes the component and the whole Joomla administrator together
- Fullscreen workspace — a distraction-free shell with its own sidebar and a breadcrumb trail on every screen
- Ctrl+K quick search — jump to any item by title, SKU or barcode from anywhere
- Date pickers with presets — calendar pickers in your own date format, with last 7, 30 and 90 day and this-month shortcuts
- Fast lists — sorting and filtering resolved across the whole list rather than the page in front of you, plus bulk publish, unpublish and delete
- Never lose work — an unsaved-changes prompt on every edit form

🧪 Evaluation & demo data

See it working before you commit to typing anything in.
- One-click sample data — a complete demo inventory with categories, warehouses, items and transaction history
- Added alongside your own — every seeded row is tracked, so removing the demo takes back exactly what it added

🔗 Resources

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