Assets: FileMaker Pro 12 Starter Solution

Assets is one of the built-in FileMaker Pro 12 Starter Solutions. It's one of the 16 pre-made templates that's available for you to start using for your database requirements. It's fully unlocked so you can view and modify the database tables, relationships, layouts, and scripts.

It includes fields to track Item, Model, and Serial Number information, as well as cost and depreciation. There's a section where you can enter details on when the item was checked in or out, and a signature field to hold the last person who the asset was assigned to. A button at the top right corner of the database window sends the information in the record to your email program.

The list view contains a couple of more options:

• a drop down list to sort the assets by category, item, or status.
• buttons to Import and Export records to and from Excel, a text file, or other formats supported by FileMaker Pro 12.
• a label report where you can print asset tags to sticker labels.
• a Depreciation Report showing a bar chart of cost and value of assets per category.
• an Inventory Report listing assets grouped by category, with a pie chart showing the percentage of each asset category.

The Labels Layout and Depreciation Report (click for a larger view).

The Asset Inventory Report (click for a larger view).

Aside from the professionally designed templates that look great on the desktop version of FileMaker Pro 12 (for Macintosh or Windows), additional layouts for FileMaker Go 12 for iOS and built-in scripts in the Starter Solution automatically show the best layout based on your mobile device (either iPad or iPhone/iPod Touch). Here's what the iPad layout looks like:

The List view in iPad shows larger, touch-friendly controls.

The detail view is optimized for both landscape (above) and portrait view (below).

You can work with this starter solution in your iOS device in several ways:

• You can sync it with your iPad or iPhone/iPod Touch using iTunes.
• You can email the file to your iOS device and open it with FileMaker Go 12.
• You can enable FileMaker Network Sharing in FileMaker Pro 12, and open the file remotely using FileMaker Go 12.

To access this Starter Solution, open FileMaker Pro 12 and click File > New From Starter Solution. This works even with the trial version of FileMaker Pro 12. Enjoy!