Running InvenTree for HFS and Micromelon

Back in 2024 I spun up InvenTree for HFS and Micromelon. If you haven't met it, InvenTree is free open-source inventory management: parts, stock levels, locations, BOMs, all in a web interface you host yourself.

We used it for two things. Knowing where in the warehouse each thing actually was, and predicting when we'd run out of parts so orders went in before the line stopped. For both of those it was pretty good, especially for free software. Every part had a location, every build pulled stock, and the forecasting was enough to stop the surprise shortages.

It's not a full ERP and it doesn't pretend to be. No real purchasing workflows, no accounting, nothing customer-facing. But for a small hardware company that mostly needed to know "where is it and when do we run out", it was good enough for us then.

Worth noting where this ended up: we've since moved to a fully custom app that handles everything Micromelon, and InvenTree has been retired. That's less a knock on InvenTree and more what happens when the business outgrows "good enough".