ITMS

ITMS is the inventory management system for BBTech's refurbished-device operation: devices are received, identified by barcode and group SKUs, moved through their stages, and sold or handled under warranty. This page is about how it got there and what my part in it has been, which changed from phase to phase.

Before any web application, the operation ran on the BBTech Stock Tracker, a macro-enabled Excel workbook that went live on 1 July 2025. I worked on it as a small product, and its own change history records versions from June 2025 to January 2026: splitting receiving, technician and e-commerce work into separate sheets; generating barcode SKUs from the serial, model and specification; group SKUs so e-commerce could list variants together on Easystore; switching long SKUs to QR codes; and tracking cost, sell price, sold date and warranty end date.

The automation lived in formulas and VBA. A macro logs each status change with the timestamp, the time spent in the previous stage and the person who made the change, so the time each department took could be measured. An Update button lets staff scan a SKU and edit its record without touching formula-driven cells. A user guide explains which columns are formulated, which are drop-downs and which are free text, and how to extend the drop-down lists, and several versions were changes users asked for. Labels were printed from it on a NIIMBOT printer, the same printer the Print Engine later drives.

The team ran the operation on it and shared it as a weekly submission. It is also where I learned the process itself, which is what still makes me useful when the web system misbehaves.

BBTech then moved the workflow into a web application. I was committed to other BBTech projects at the time, so another developer built the web ITMS: a Next.js, TypeScript and Supabase application covering devices, SKU generation, sales, warranty, members, audit history and reporting.

I did not write that application, and this portfolio does not claim it.

Once the web ITMS was released and the team started using it, I became actively involved again. I troubleshoot problems as they come up, fix issues, and make improvements, working with the developer whenever something needs changing in the application itself.

Recent examples in the code: the Excel export library is now loaded only when someone exports, so pages with tables no longer ship it, and a duplicate fetch of the device list on first load was removed.

Label printing was one of the problems I took on, and my manager asked me to solve it. Rather than patch around it inside ITMS, I built the RPOMS Print Engine: my own, independently developed browser workstation that drives a NIIMBOT B1 Pro thermal printer over Web Bluetooth, with a device-label module for BBTech's QR labels and a relay page that other applications print through.

I built the ITMS side of that integration, merged and deployed on 4 October 2026 (commit 0f67de6): a small print service that validates a device's barcode and group SKUs and opens the relay, and print buttons on the new-device form, the device details and the device drawer, plus a printer-setup button in the devices header. ITMS never talks to the printer; the open, connected Print Engine does, and reports the real result back.