[ALUG] Charity sack collection organiser

[Dennis Dryden]

On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 5:10 PM, Mark Rogers<mark at quarella.co.uk> wrote:
> Sorry for the terrible subject line, I can't think of a better one!
>
> I've been asked by someone who organises charity bag collections for some
> software to help them organise themselves. Ie they send people out to drop
> empty sacks (or leaflets) through people's doors, then go back to collect
> them, and they want a way to basically manage that process to make sure
> areas get covered properly but not more than once, to record how many bags
> they get back out of each 100 empty bags they send out, etc.
>
> Any suggestions?

Sounds like they need more then just software they need a whole
system! I'm guessing your working as there a systems analyst though?
What do you have control to change and whats the current setup? For
example can they have a unique identifier printed on each bag/leaflet?
Do they have the people to process them when they come back?

My first thought is to have something similar to a loan system and
maybe have a unique barcode on each leaflet/bag. I don't know of any
existing free loan management software but for the barcode stuff there
is gnu barcode[1], kbarcode[2], libdmtx[3]. I'm guessing your going to
be dealing with a very large number of bags/leaflets so libdmtx or
another 2D barcode system is best or you'll run out of unique
identifiers quickly. Libdmtx seems like a cheap option as you should
be able to just use a webcam to read the barcodes although some
scripting/coding will be required.

Dennis Dryden

[1] http://www.gnu.org/software/barcode/
[2] http://www.kbarcode.net/
[3] http://www.libdmtx.org/