iOS data entry app, or: How to efficiently onboard lots of existing assets?

[jnernst]

I'm currently pondering which home organization tool to use. The situation is that I already have a lot of "assets" (some in boxes, some in various places, a typical household of 5, one of them a hoarder). It seems daunting to onboard a relevant subset of these manually, particularly if I have to move around in the house to inventorize them.

I'd imaging an ideal/efficient solution could be something like a simple app on a phone. I'm taking inspiration from paperless-ngx, which works beautifully for documents/document-like material:

User story:

1. Identify new item to onboard
2. Slap pre-printed barcode on it
3. Open app
4. [Optionally] change "current location" (e.g. I'm now in the basement, all assets from here on are automatically associated with "basement")
5. Push "+" / "Add asset" / "Add location"
6. Take image of asset with barcode visible
7. [Optionally] take more images of asset in case barcode image does not suffice to show asset
8. [Optionally] Add/change homebox metadata
9. Upload image/metadata, tagged with the id from the Barcode
10. [Later] Go to desktop and add any further information, e.g. tags, title, description, etc.

The above is very much like paperless-ngx data capture apps work (e.g. paperless-swift). Paperless-ngx optionally uses barcodes in exactly the same way: Link digital and physical artifacts. There it is called "ASN", archived serial number, and automatically extracted from a barcode that you can slap on the document.

An efficient data entry method with a minimal amount of steps is what's keeping me from deciding for homebox atm. Are there others out there with the same problem, is there already a way to cobble together an efficient workflow?