Bookings & the calendar

A booking is the unit of work in Shelf — a reservation of gear for a date range, from the moment someone pencils it in to the moment the last case is checked back in.

The booking lifecycle

• DRAFT — a booking being put together. Add or remove assets and kits freely; nothing is locked against availability yet.
• RESERVED — confirmed. From this point the gear is held for this date range, and other bookings will show a conflict if they try to reserve the same individual asset for an overlapping window.
• ONGOING — checked out. The booking's start date has arrived (or gear has been physically checked out) and assets are marked as out with this booking.
• OVERDUE — a status on top of ONGOING, not a separate stage: the booking's end date has passed and something on it still hasn't been checked back in. It clears the moment the last item is checked in. Overdue bookings surface on the dashboard so nothing quietly stays out forever, and the Overdue Itemsreport puts a number on what's still out.
• COMPLETE — everything on the booking has been checked back in.
• CANCELLED — a draft or reserved booking that never happened. Terminal.
• ARCHIVED — a completed or cancelled booking put away out of the active list. Nothing is deleted; archiving is a tidy-up, not a data loss.

View Bookings lists every booking in your workspace, with its status, dates, and custodian at a glance — the everyday list view for checking what's coming up or what's still open.

The calendar

Calendar gives you the same bookings as a month/week view instead of a list — useful for spotting clashes at a glance (two jobs both wanting the same van, a gap where nothing's booked) before they turn into a conflict on a specific booking.

If you'd rather see your bookings alongside everything else on your own calendar, Account details → Calendars gives you a subscribable feed URL per workspace — point Google Calendar, Outlook or Apple Calendar at it once and it stays current on its own. See Workspace settings.

Building a booking

From Bookings → View Bookings → New booking, you set a name, dates, and a custodian (who's responsible for the gear while it's out), then add gear:

• Individual assets by browsing, searching, or scanning their QR/Shelf code directly into the booking.
• Kits, which add every member asset in one action and keep them grouped on the booking view rather than showing as loose individual rows.
• Quantity-tracked assets, where you pick how many units you need — Shelf checks that many are actually available across the booking's date range before letting you add them.

Conflicts

Shelf won't silently double-book an individual asset. If you try to add something already reserved on another booking with an overlapping date range, you'll see the conflict called out at the point you add it — with a link to the other booking — rather than discovering it at load-in. Quantity-tracked assets work the same way but against the count still available, not a single item: adding more than what's free across the window is blocked the same way.

Check-out and check-in

When a booking's start date arrives, checking gear out moves it (and the booking) to ONGOING. Check-out and check-in can be done per-item or in bulk, and partial check-in is fine — if half the gear on a booking comes back today and the rest tomorrow, check in what's actually in front of you rather than waiting for everything at once. What's still outstanding keeps the booking ONGOING (or OVERDUE, once the return date's passed) until the last item is checked in.

Related

• Assets, kits & labels — what you're adding to a booking
• Kits & custody — why custody isn't a booking, and how it blocks check-out
• Workspace settings — working hours, auto-archive, notifications and other booking rules
• Reports — booking compliance, overdue items, what gets booked most
• Lost & found — for the gear that does not come back
• Troubleshooting — booking conflicts and custody blocking check-out
• Kits and custody — who is holding what, and how that differs from a booking