Airtable - The Inventory Manager

•

For the final project in this series, I tackled Formula Fields. Up until now, everything I've entered into Airtable has been static — I type it in, and it stays there. I wanted to see how the database could do the maths for me.

Airtable Inventory Manager Airtable Inventory Manager

The Setup

I created an "Inventory Manager" and listed a few RPG items: Potion, Sword, and Shield.

To test out a formula, I needed two data points:

  • Price (Currency field)
  • Stock (Number field)

The Formula

In a standard spreadsheet, you would usually write a formula based on grid coordinates, like =A2B2*. In Airtable, you just write formulas using the names of the fields themselves.

So I created a new field called "Total Value," selected the Formula type, and entered: *Price Stock (no quotation marks, no squiggly brackets, just the plain text).

The Result

As soon as I hit save, the "Total Value" column populated automatically.

  • Potion ($50 x 10) = $500
  • Sword ($150 x 2) = $300

The real test, however, was changing the data. I updated the stock of the Potion from 10 to 20 and low-and-behold, the "Total Value" updated to $1000. Magic :)

Verdict

As with Excel, Airtable handles the logic for you, so you don't need to manually recalculate totals every time you buy or sell stock.

Series Conclusion

That wraps up the 10-project challenge that Gemini created for me. Each one was too short and simple for my liking, but I suppose I did get an introduction to many of the basic features such as views, filters, and grouped data. Now onto bigger and more exciting things!