How Shelf works

Shelf is the system your gear runs on: what you own, what it's packed into, where it lives, who's got it and until when — and, for the things that leave the building, the label on the case and the portal a stranger scans when they find it.

It's one workspace shared by everyone at your company. What a warehouse coordinator sees and what a producer sees differ (some pages are hidden or read-only for crew-level roles), but it's the same data underneath: an asset added in the morning shows up on a booking that afternoon, in the audit someone runs next week, and in the report someone runs next month.

This guide is written for the people who use Shelf day to day — producers, warehouse and ops staff, and the strangers who touch one small part of it through a scanned label rather than a login. If you're after developer or deployment documentation, that lives in the rest of this site (see the sidebar).

The shape of it

The coral box is the only part of Shelf that works without a login — a stranger who finds a lost case and scans the label. Everything else needs a workspace account.

The sidebar mirrors that shape: an Asset management group (assets, kits, categories, tags, locations, audits, reports), a Scheduling group (bookings, reminders), and Labels & QR for everything to do with printing and the code pool.

The building blocks, in one paragraph each

Assets and kits. An asset is one thing you own or track — a camera, a flight case, a box of cable ties. Assets are either individual (this exact body, tracked one at a time) or quantity-tracked (a pool of 40 radios you draw down). Kits group assets that always travel together so you can book, check out and return them as one unit. Every asset and kit gets a QR code — see Assets, kits & labels.

Locations. Where things live when they're not on a job — your store, a prep bay, a satellite office. Assets and kit slices have a location each, so "what's actually on the shelf right now" is always answerable without walking out there.

Bookings. The unit of work. A booking reserves gear for a date range and moves through a lifecycle from draft to returned, with check-out and check-in recording what actually went out the door and what came back. See Bookings & the calendar.

Custody. Separate from bookings: who is personally holding a thing right now, whether or not it's on a job. Team members who never log in can still hold custody, which is what makes it usable for freelancers. See Kits & custody.

Audits. A real stocktake against the list. Scan through a location, see what's missing, and settle the drift before it turns into a write-off. See Audits.

Reports. The standing numbers, as opposed to a point-in-time count — what's overdue, what never gets booked, who's holding what, what the fleet is worth. See Reports.

Codes and labels. Every QR code carries a short, human-readable Shelf code (ARTGRP-123ABC) alongside it, so reading one off a scuffed label over the phone doesn't turn into a guessing game. Labels print straight to a Brother or Zebra thermal printer. Gear that already carries a manufacturer barcode can use that instead — Code 128, Code 39, DataMatrix and EAN-13 are all supported. See Barcodes & codes and Printing labels.

Lost & found. Every printed label carries a found-portal address. Anyone who finds a lost case can scan it and report it — no app, no login, no need to know who you are. See Lost & found.

Categories, tags, custom fields and asset models. How the gear is structured and searchable — one category per asset, any number of tags, custom fields for the questions your workspace specifically needs answered, and asset models for bulk-creating a batch of identical gear at once. See Organising your gear.

Reminders. A one-off, scheduled email against a single asset — a service date, an insurance renewal — separate from bookings and separate from reports. See Reminders.

Where to start, by role

Anyone who just needs to get in: Signing in — Google for Artefact staff, an emailed invite for everyone else, and what each role can see.

Producer or office admin (you set the workspace up): start with Getting started — the setup wizard, the first-run checklist, and inviting your team. Then read Assets, kits & labels, because getting the gear listed and labelled is what makes everything else work. If you'd rather follow an ordered week-one plan than jump between pages, Your first week with Shelf is written for exactly that.

Warehouse or ops staff (you handle the gear): start with Assets, kits & labels for Shelf codes, labels and scanning, then Bookings & the calendar for check-out and check-in.

Someone who found a lost case: you don't need an account or an app. Scan the code on the label, or type it into the address printed beside it. See Lost & found.

Related

• Your first week with Shelf — an ordered, honest first-week plan
• Glossary — the vocabulary this page uses, defined precisely
• Signing in — Google, invites, passwords and roles
• Getting started — first sign-in, the setup wizard, and the first-run checklist
• Assets, kits & labels — Shelf codes, labels, barcodes, scanning
• Organising your gear — categories, tags, custom fields, asset models
• Kits & custody — gear that travels together, and who's holding it
• Bookings & the calendar — the booking lifecycle, check-out and check-in
• Reminders — a one-off scheduled nudge against a single asset
• Audits — running a stocktake and settling the drift
• Reports — what each report answers and when to run it
• Barcodes & codes — QR, Shelf codes and manufacturer barcodes
• Printing labels — printers, the print relay, tape sizes, calibration
• Lost & found — the found-portal story
• Workspace settings — booking rules, general settings, and your account
• Troubleshooting — the failure modes worth knowing about before you hit them