Don’t Lose Your Friends Over a Book or a Movie

In "The Top Surprising Reasons Friends Break Up," one of the top five reasons was arguments over whether someone had returned a movie or a book. It's easy to be friends until you think your friends have something that's yours, and they aren't giving it back. There's a lot of different ways that you can try to manage this. You could decide that a book or a movie really isn't worth losing a friendship over. You could purchase a replacement. Or you could keep track of where you loaned your books and movies and when. There's nothing like a handy chart to help trigger the memory and make sure that you aren't going to get your book or movie from the wrong friend.

Of course, you can do this the old fashioned way. A lot of people try to do this with a pad of paper and a pen, but that isn't always very efficient. It's much better to get an inexpensive inventory software program to keep track of all your books and movies. Here's how to make the most of that kind of system.

Upload All of Your Books and Movies

As a general rule, it's good to keep your household possessions inventoried. This way you know what you own and all of the relevant details. When you loan out a lot of books and movies, you can save yourself a tremendous amount of frustration and aggravation simply by uploading them into the program. Asset Panda is not only freed, it comes with a feature that allows you to scan the codes with your iPhone and upload the information directly into your account.

If you have a good iPhone and a few hours on hand, you can quickly use the inventory software to catalog all of your entertainment treasures. Plan on it taking approximately one afternoon, unless you have thousands of books and movies. Since the Asset Panda looks up the ISBN code, it will get all the information for you, and you won't have to worry about taking pictures. You can, of course, take pictures if you like. This is only necessary, though, if you have a unique book or film that is not like most of the others for sale on the market or an autographed book or film.

Turn Your Inventory into a Loaner List

The next step is to turn your inventory into a loaner list. You just need to maximize on the notes feature in the software for inventory. This is one of the simplest parts. Since you can carry Asset Panda with you on your iPhone, you'll always have access to your list. When a friend wants to borrow a book or a movie, all you have to do is open the Asset Panda app, search for the appropriate book or movie, and then add to the notes. State who you are lending it to and what day you are lending it. This way you have a clear record, and you don't have to worry about figuring out who you lent it to.

The only thing that is more important than putting down that you are loaning the book or movie is making sure that you mark down when they return it. Otherwise, you're going to be in the same mess all over again. If you're inclined to loan a lot of books and movies, then go ahead and keep the list of everyone you've loaned to. This way you don't have to worry about trying to remember if you've ever loaned it to someone or if you have promised to lend it to someone.