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, 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 a label printed before 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 for a date range, with a custodian responsible for it. 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.

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.

Custody

Custody answers "who has this right now" outside a booking — a camera signed out to an operator for the week, a radio kit held by a venue. Assign custody to a team member and the asset shows as held rather than available; release it and it comes back to the pool. Custody and bookings are different questions on purpose: a booking is a reservation for dates, custody is possession now.

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.

Stocktakes and reports

An audit is a stocktake: pick a location or the whole store, scan your way through it, and Shelf tells you what is missing, what turned up that should not be there, and what nobody has touched. Reports cover the questions someone else usually asks — what is overdue, what is sitting idle, what a category is worth — for an insurer, a client, or the end of a job.

Getting access

Sign-in is the same as the rest of the platform: Google Workspace SSO for staff, or an email/password or SMS one-time code 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
Tools launcher — your way back to the rest of the platform
Critique — reviewing a design before it goes into production

Going deeper

This page is the overview. Step-by-step guides — organising your gear, printing labels that scan, running a stocktake, importing a spreadsheet — live in the Shelf help centre.