I use Excel for my inventory which has been quite adequate for my needs. Fields for each item are:
- serial number in my collection, starting with 1 for the first board. A yellow sticky dot with that number is on every board.
- DEC part number
- etch revision
- ECN of the board
- DEC option part number
- Description
- Purchase date
- Aquisition date
- Cost
- Date of assembly or date code of the youngest IC on the board
- board status- good, bad, or unknown
- system number where the board is being used or blank if it's in the spares collection
- brief description of the present status
- a column for each of the popular board types so I can easily have a count of how many of each that I have. Types that are tracked this way are: M8300, M8310, M8320, M8330, M8357, M8357'r, G104, G227, G619, G111, G233, G646, RLM-1 (memory board), the front panel boards, 32KW memory board
- Source
- name of seller
- other notes
Usually the list is sorted by "serial number in my collection". I fairly often will sort by DEC part number and look at the quantity of a particular board type to know how much I might need or might not need to purchase a new item.
I use a less rigorous system for tracking PDP-8/L boards but can determine whether a board was an original in the machine or if it came from the spares kit, and whether a board is good or bad or has been repaired.