Suresh Sundaram

@Min Got it. I also checked out the blog post from @Hulk. 
 
Thanks for all the help, guys. I’m going to go out and enjoy the 59 degree (F) sunny day here in Boston on January 13!

Thanks, Callie, for the detailed response.
I am a total hobbyist potter and barely break 4 figures in sales in a year so that gives you sense of the scale of my operation!
I am concluding that I am using Trello both as a workflow management system and as an inventory management system and that is probably expecting too much. On the workflow side, I agree, I added a lot of fields like all the intermediate dates, weights, dimensions, etc. so I could do analytics. Needless to say...I haven't done any analytics which begs the question why bother capturing all that data! Duh!
I am thinking if I can simplify the number of steps and reduce the number of fields, I will use Trello more. Then if there is a way to export the finished items to a spreadsheet, the spreadsheet can become my inventory system.
Thanks again. It has been  productive conversation
Suresh
  

How I wish I had joined this forum a lot sooner than just a couple of weeks ago!
I started using Trello for organizing my pottery projects in 2019, but essentially gave up sometime in 2022. There were several reasons (listed below) but I wonder if I had found this forum back then I would have learned a few tricks that would have had me keep using it.
The things I loved about Trello were the easy user interface, the ability to easily customize fields, the amazing mobile app and the price ($0). I use a community studio and the ability to update things on the mobile app was a killer feature.
The main reason I quit using Trello is because I found the it very unwieldy. I created separate boards for each year, one for 2019, one for 2020 and so on. I had my lists organized according to my community studio workflow steps -throw, trim, bisque shelf, bisque done, glaze, glaze shelf, glaze done, picked up, sold, discarded. Even with so many steps, eventually all the items ended up in one of the last three lists.  I added photos to each item and displayed the finished photo as a thumbnail so I could see what each piece was. The problem: once you have 50 or more pieces in the list I found having to scroll up and down all the time looking for the item I was interested in was a big pain. Has anybody else figured out how to deal with this? (I could have  probably reduced the information I had visible on each card but I think it would show at most 5 items on the screen so I don't know that it would have solved the scrolling problem.)

The second problem I had is that when I started using Trello, they gave the free user the use of one or two (I can't remember) Power Ups. When I went to create the 2022 board they took that away. I could keep using the Power Ups in the boards that I had already created but I could not create a new board with these Power Ups. So I used by 2021 board for my 2022 work. But it bothered me that they could just take features away with no notification at any time. As a free user I guess I should expect it but they lost a bit of trust. For the life of me I can't remember what the Power Ups were! I went back to my board (they are still there after more than a year of not using it) but I can't figure it out.
The final problem may have been my own creation. In an effort to really track what was happening with my pottery, I created lots of fields - see screen shot below. Entering all those fields was a pain - click on the card, click on the field, enter the value, close the field, close the card. I decided a spreadsheet would be much more compact and quick. I switched to a spreadsheet but the problem of course is that a spreadsheet is not as visually appealing, and storing pictures in a spreadsheet is a pain. 
 

For now I am thinking of using the Photos app., and creating albums to reflect the workflow stage. Now that I think about it I am not sure it will work. So I am still on the hunt for a good way to track workflow. Eventually I would love it if I could integrated my tracking software with a sales/consignment software so I can easily upload my finished pieces to an inventory system. 
However, since I am still working full time and pottery is just a hobby, the need is not urgent. I just love solving these kinds of problems!
Apologies for the long post.