Shelf

Shelf is the system a production runs on for a job: the gear, the kits it's packed into, where it all lives, who's booked it and when, the crew working the show, the clients asking for quotes, and — for gear that walks — the label on the case and the portal a stranger scans when they find it. It's one shared workspace: an asset added in the morning shows up on a booking that afternoon and on the call sheet printed for load-in.

Assets, kits, and locations

An asset is one thing you track — a camera, a flight case, a specific cable. Assets come in two flavours: individual assets are tracked one at a time (this specific camera, not "a camera"), while quantity-tracked assets are a stock pool with a count (a box of 250 cable ties) — you book and check out a quantity, and Shelf keeps track of how many are actually free across any date range you're looking at.

A kit groups assets that travel together — a full audio rig, a lighting package — so you can book, check out, and return them as one unit instead of chasing down every piece individually.

Locations are where things live when they're not out on a job — your store, a prep bay, a satellite office. Every asset and kit has one location at a time, so "what's actually here right now" is always answerable.

Bookings

A booking is the unit of work in Shelf — a reservation of gear (and crew) for a date range. Everything else on a job hangs off it: a call sheet, a quote, a proposal a client approves. A booking moves through a simple lifecycle — draft while you're still putting it together, reserved once it's confirmed and the gear is held against that date range, ongoing once it's checked out, and complete once everything's back. If gear is still out past the return date, the booking shows as overdue until the last item is checked in, so nothing quietly stays out forever. Shelf won't let you double-book an individual asset — try to add something already reserved elsewhere on an overlapping date range and you'll see the conflict immediately, with a link to the other booking, instead of finding out at load-in.

For workspaces that hire gear out, a booking can carry a quote — priced line items pulled from your rate cards — which turns into a proposal: a link you send a client to review and approve, no login required on their end. If your workspace takes deposits, approval and payment happen on that same page.

Labels and the Shelf code

Every QR code Shelf generates — on an asset, a kit, or a blank label waiting to be linked — carries a short, human-readable alias alongside it called the Shelf code (it looks like ARTGRP-123ABC). It's built from an alphabet with no easily-confused characters, so reading one off a scuffed label over the phone doesn't turn into a guessing game, and typing the code does exactly the same thing as scanning the QR.

Once a label printer is connected (Settings → Printers, supporting a Brother VC-500W or Zebra ZD411D over a small always-on relay program on your network), printing a label takes one click from an asset's page. What happens when someone scans a label depends on who they are: your own signed-in team lands on the asset itself (or a quick "add a title and photo" screen, if the label isn't linked to anything yet); anyone else — including the public — lands on the lost & found portal instead, and never sees valuation, custody, or notes, only the item's name, category, and how to report it found.

Crew and call sheets

Every person who can appear on a call sheet has a crew profile, whether or not they have a Shelf login. Freelancers and casual crew are usually added as non-registered members — a full profile Shelf can put on a call sheet and hand custody to, with no login and no password to manage. A call sheet covers one or more days of a job and can be shared as a public link: anyone holding it can see call times and contacts, clock in and out (including breaks), and sign off their role for the day, all from their phone with no account needed. The link only ever shows names and hours — nothing more.

Client requests

A public request-portal link, turned on from Settings, lets a prospective or existing client ask for gear and dates without an account. They fill in who they are, what they need, and (optionally) dates and a rough budget; your team gets notified and reviews it in the Requests inbox, where a request can be turned into a booking and — once it's priced — sent back to the client as a proposal to approve.

Lost & found

Every printed label carries a lost & found address. A finder scans the code or types it in manually, sees only the item's name and how to reach your workspace, and can leave a report with their contact details — no account needed on either side. Your team gets notified by email the moment a report comes in.

Suppliers and purchase orders

Not everything a job needs is something you own. Shelf also tracks vendors, rate cards for what you charge clients, and purchase orders for what you owe suppliers — so the cost side of a job lives next to the gear and the client-facing quote, not in a separate spreadsheet.

Getting access

Sign-in is the same Google Workspace SSO as the rest of the platform for staff, or an email/password invite for guests — see Getting started. The first person from a company to sign in sets the workspace up; everyone who signs in after that joins it.

Getting started — signing in and what access means
Critique — reviewing a design before it goes into production