Inventory
What this is for
Twenty-six weekends a year, the same cases go on the same truck. And every
year somebody opens case 7 in a ballroom in another state and finds the
extension cords aren’t in it.
This is the list. Numbered cases, what’s supposed to be in each one, how
many, and what condition it’s in. Print a code for each case, stick it on,
and anybody with a phone can see the packing list — or run the check —
standing at the truck.
Look for Inventory in the left-hand menu, under Modules. If it
isn’t there, it’s not in your plan yet — ask us.
The main page
The Inventory page has a switch at the top with two views:
- Cases — one row per numbered case
- Items — every single item you own, in one long list
The Items view has quick filters worth knowing: Low stock,
Damaged/missing, and Unassigned. Those three answer most of the
questions you’ll actually have.
Creating a case
Click New case
The box explains itself: The number should match what’s stenciled on
the physical case. You’ll add the manifest on the next screen.Enter the Case #
A whole number. Use the number that’s actually painted on the case.Give it a Name
Something a tired person will recognise — Awards & medals.Fill in Packed by and Warehouse if you use them
Packed by is a position, like Merch lead. Warehouse is where it
lives between events; leave it on Not assigned if you don’t track
that.Add Notes
Anything a person needs to know before they lift it. The example given
is Heavy — two-person lift.Click Create case
Filling in the packing list
Once the case exists, you’re on its own page. The card in the middle is
called Manifest — that’s just the list of what belongs in the case.
Under the table there’s a short strip to add an item: Item,
Container, Pack, On hand.
- Item — the name.
- Container — an optional sub-grouping inside the case. If you’ve got
a small bin inside case 7 that holds all the cables, name it and every
cable goes under it. Anything you don’t put in a container shows as
Loose in case. - Pack — how many belong in the case when it’s fully stocked.
- On hand — how many are actually there right now.
The Repl column (short for reorder threshold) is the number that
triggers a warning. Set it to 2 on gaff tape and Herding Cats will start
telling you to buy more once you’re down to two.
You can drag items up and down, move an item to another case, or pull it
out of the case entirely.
Set Pack even if you’re not sure about Repl. Pack is what makes the
restock list useful later — Herding Cats can tell you buy 4 to get back to
a full pack only if it knows what a full pack is.
What a case weighs
Weights are optional. Leave them blank and nothing changes. Fill them in
and each case tells you what it weighs, which helps when you’re planning
a truck or deciding whether a case is a two-person lift.
- Weight (each) is what one of an item weighs, in pounds. You can
type it when you add an item, or click Weights above the manifest
(or above the Items table) to show a weight column you can fill in.
Decimals are fine: 2.5 means two and a half pounds. - Empty weight is the case itself, with nothing in it. It’s in the
Details card on the case’s page, and on the New case form. - Packed weight is what the whole case weighed on a scale, packed and
ready to go. It sits beside Empty weight in the same two places.
The case adds it up for you: each item’s weight times its Pack, plus
the empty case if you’ve weighed it. It shows under the case name as
Packed weight (or Contents weight if the empty case isn’t
weighed yet). If you’ve weighed the packed case, that number wins and the
line says so: Packed weight: 184 lb (weighed).
If some items in a case still have no weight, the case won’t pretend.
It says at least and tells you how many items are missing a weight,
for example at least 104.5 lb · 3 of 15 items have no weight.
Once any case has a weight, the cases list gets a Weight column you
can sort by. The weight also shows on the page a phone opens when you
scan the case’s code.
A case’s size
Dimensions are the outside of the case — length × width × height, in
inches — on the New case form and in the Details card. Type them
on one line, the way they’re usually written: 48 x 24 x 30. Decimals
are fine, and so is a size in centimetres (122 x 61 x 76 cm) — it’s
converted and shown in inches. Leave it blank if you haven’t measured.
Items that aren’t in a case yet
There’s a card called Unassigned items for gear that hasn’t been packed
anywhere. Add something there with the Add item button on the main
Inventory page, and drag it onto a case whenever it gets packed.
What needs attention: the Replenishment page
Click Replenishment at the top of the Inventory page. The description
tells you what it is: Restock, repair, and replace — assembled live from
every case’s manifest, so nothing dies in a binder.
You don’t build this list. It builds itself, from three signals:
| Group | Why something is on it |
|---|---|
| Restock | The count dropped below its reorder threshold |
| Repair | Somebody marked it damaged |
| Replace | Somebody marked it missing |
The Need column tells you how many to buy to get back to a full pack.
For each row you can:
- Resolve it — for a restock, it sets the count back to a full pack;
for a repair or replace, it sets the condition back to good. - Create task — puts it on somebody’s to-do list. Once created the
button reads Task open. - Log repair — starts a costed repair record. Once logged it reads
In shop.
When everything’s fine the page says so: Nothing needs attention. —
Every count is at or above its threshold, and nothing is marked damaged or
missing. The cases are show-ready.
Repairs: the Maintenance page
The maintenance log is the costed history behind the repair queue — what
broke, who fixed it, what it cost.
Click Log maintenance
Or use Log repair from the Replenishment page, which fills in the
item for you.Pick what broke
Either a single Item or a Whole case.Choose the Kind
Repair, Service, or Inspection.Add a Vendor and a Cost if you know them
The cost box says Estimate or final — optional. Log it now, cost it
later.Write Notes
The example is exactly the kind of thing that’s useful:
“1 does not work — labelled.” What, where, how bad.Click Log it
Entries move through Open → In progress → Resolved. When you
click Resolve it asks for the Final cost — this is the number the
history keeps — and how it was fixed.
If your company has the Finance module, the three-dot menu on a maintenance
row offers Create repair bill. It drafts a vendor bill for you, coded
to repairs and maintenance, which you then approve and pay under
Payables.
The count history: Stock movements
Every change to a count is written down, in date order, on the
Movements page. Purchases, sales, load-outs, shrinkage — everything.
The important rule is printed on the page: movements can’t be edited. If
you record something wrong, you fix it by recording the opposite movement,
not by rubbing out the first one. That way the history stays honest.
To record one by hand, click Record movement, pick the Item, the
Kind (Purchase, Sale, Transfer, Adjustment, Load-out, Load-in,
Shrinkage, Return), a positive Quantity, and the date it happened. The
kind decides whether it adds or subtracts. There’s a preview showing what
the count will become.
If a count is allowed to go negative, it will — and the page tells you why:
On hand goes negative — allowed, and an honest signal to recount. A
negative number means something wasn’t recorded, and hiding that would only
make it harder to find.
Importing your case list or packing list
If your cases, or what goes in them, are already listed in a document
somewhere, you don’t have to retype them. Two kinds of list work:
- A list of cases — one row per case: its number, its name, and
whatever else you keep (who owns it, where it lives, size, weight). - A packing list — the items that go in your cases, with how many of
each, grouped by case or not.
Upload the document in your document intake area
Go to Inventory and click Import list
The page is called Import cases or a packing list, and it promises:
nothing saves until you confirm.Pick the document and click Read this list
Check what it read
The first line says how it read the file — for example We read this as
a list of 34 cases. If that’s wrong, switch between These rows are
cases and These rows are items. No re-upload needed. If the file’s
columns and the reading don’t agree, the page asks you to choose before
anything can be imported.Review the rows
- Cases: fix any numbers or names, and pick a home warehouse. A
Weight column (in pounds or kilograms) and a Dimensions or
Size column — or separate Length, Width and Height columns — fill
in each case’s packed weight and size, which you can check and edit in
the Weight · Size column before saving. Other columns with no field
of their own go into the case’s notes, and you can see and edit those
notes too. A weight or size the import can’t read stays in the notes,
as written, and the row says so. A case number you already have is
skipped, never overwritten. Click Add as a new case on that row if
it really is a different case — it gets the next free number. - Items: for each group choose where it goes under Import into —
a new case, an existing case, or Unassigned items (no case). Fix any
names, packs, or thresholds before continuing. A Weight or
Weight (each) column fills in what one of each item weighs.
- Cases: fix any numbers or names, and pick a home warehouse. A
Click Import
The button counts what it’s about to add. When it’s done, the page lists
anything it skipped.
Bring in your Cin7 export
If your stock already lives in Cin7 Core (or another system that exports a
product list), you don’t have to retype it — and you don’t have to move off
it. Cin7 stays the master of your SKUs. We import the list so that scanning
a barcode here finds the right thing straight away.
What to export: a product or stock-on-hand list as CSV or Excel. The
columns worth having in it are the SKU or product code, the product name (or
the family plus its options), the barcode, the quantity on hand, the average
cost, the supplier, the location, and the product’s weight (with its weight
units, if your export has that column). Column names differ between export
templates, and that’s fine — we match them by meaning, so ProductCode,
Stock On Hand and Avg Cost all land where they should.
Upload it to your document intake area, identify it as an inventory list,
then go to Inventory → Import list and pick it. A file with a SKU or
barcode column skips the document reading entirely and opens a mapping
review instead.
Check the Columns card
Every one of our fields shows which of your columns it matched. Change
any that are wrong, or set one to Not in this file. The rows below
re-read themselves as you change it.Point each Location at a warehouse
The Locations card lists every stockroom named in the file. Each one
is matched to one of your warehouses by name, and you choose where its
rows land — Unassigned items or a case. We never create a warehouse
from a spreadsheet: a location we don’t recognise says so, and its rows
go to Unassigned unless you send them somewhere.Read the Rows
Name, type, SKU, barcode, on hand, cost, supplier — all editable. The
last column says plainly what each row will do: New item, Matched
by barcode, or Matched by SKU with the item it will update. Rows
with a family or a size/colour option are guessed as resale merch;
everything else as a consumable. Change one, or set them all at once
with the controls above the table.Decide about the counts
For rows that match something you already have, there’s one switch:
Take Cin7’s counts. Leave it off and the import fills in barcodes,
SKUs, costs and suppliers but leaves your on-hand numbers alone —
they came from somebody counting a case. A weight from the export is
only filled in where the item has none, so a weight you entered here
is never replaced.Click Import
Suppliers named in the file are created for you if they’re new. Merch rows
with a SKU are linked to (or added to) the merch catalog, which is what lets
cost of goods work when you sell one.
The same product listed at three locations imports as one item with the
three counts added together — the registry counts what the company owns.
The row tells you when it did that.
What it’s all worth
The Finance button at the top of the Inventory page opens a short menu
with two exports: Export asset register (.xlsx) and
Export asset register (.csv).
The Excel file has three sheets:
- Asset register — every piece of gear with its serial number, what it
cost, what it would cost to replace, and its value today. The page notes
it doubles as the insurance schedule. - Stock value — what your stock is worth right now.
- All items — everything, cases and loose gear alike.
To fill in those numbers, click the money icon on any item to open
Cost & finance. It asks one useful question first —
What kind of thing is this? — with three answers:
- Durable asset — Gear that lasts years — cases, processors, staging.
- Consumable — Supplies that get used up and rebought — tape, bags,
batteries. - Resale merch — Stock you sell on — shirts, pins, programs.
Everything in that box is optional. Fill in what you know.
If you sell merch at events, mark those items Resale merch. That’s what
makes them show up on the show-day settlement sheet at the end of the
weekend — see Show-day settlement.
Where to go next
- Load-outs and QR labels — the codes on the cases
and what a phone actually shows when you scan one