Shelf Help

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Reports ​

Reports answer standing questions about the workspace — what you own, what gets used, what's late, who's holding it. They're read-only views over the same data everything else uses, so nothing you do here can change a booking or an asset.

They're for the questions you ask on a schedule. For "is what's on the shelf what the system says is on the shelf", right now, in this bay — that's an audit, not a report.

Reports live under Reports in the sidebar and are visible to Owners and Admins. Base and Self-service users don't see the page at all.

How every report works ​

Each one opens with the same three controls, so once you've run one you can run any of them:

  • A timeframe. Today, last 7 / 30 / 90 days, this month, last month, this quarter, this year, all time, or a custom range. Boundaries are worked out in your timezone — "this month" starts at midnight on the 1st where you are, not on the server.
  • Filters, which vary by report: category, location, status, custodian or team member. They're listed per report below.
  • Export to CSV, on every report. Dates in the export are formatted the same way you see them on screen, so a spreadsheet never disagrees with the page it came from.

Above the table sit a handful of KPI tiles — the two-to-four numbers that report exists to produce — and, on some, a chart.

Bookings ​

Booking Compliance ​

Answers: did the work run to plan? On-time check-outs, late returns, and what's overdue right now. Tiles: Total Bookings, Overdue. Filters: status, custodian, location. Chart: yes.

Run this monthly. A rising late-return count is usually one crew member, one client, or one recurring job — the custodian filter is how you find out which.

Overdue Items ​

Answers: what is out past its return date at this moment, and how exposed are we? Tiles: Overdue Bookings, Assets Outstanding, Value at Risk, Avg. Days Overdue, Longest Overdue. Filters: custodian, location.

This is a live list, not a period summary — the timeframe doesn't soften it. It's the report to have open when you're chasing returns, because "Longest Overdue" tells you where to start and "Value at Risk" tells you how loudly.

Top Booked Assets ​

Answers: which individual items are in constant demand? Tiles: Total Bookings, Assets Booked, Avg. per Asset, Most Popular. Filters: category, location. Chart: yes.

The buy-more list. If the same three items are at the top every quarter and also keep turning up as conflicts when you build a booking, you've found a genuine shortage rather than a scheduling problem.

Top Booked Kits ​

Answers: the same question, one level up — which packages get pulled most. Tiles: Total Bookings, Kits Booked, Avg. per Kit, Most Popular. Filters: category, location.

Useful when your bookings are mostly kit-shaped: the asset-level report will show you forty individual items when the real answer is "the small audio rig, every weekend".

Answers: is the work growing, and when is the busy season? Tiles: Total Bookings, Avg. Monthly, Peak Month, Trend. Filters: category, location. Chart: yes.

Run it over "this year" or "all time" — over 30 days it has nothing to say. Peak Month is the one to take into a hiring or purchasing conversation.

Assets ​

Asset Inventory ​

Answers: what do we own, where is it, and what's it worth? Tiles: Total Assets, Total Value, Available, In Custody. Filters: category, location, status.

The straightforward stocktake-on-paper. Filter to a location and export it when someone external — an insurer, a finance team, a venue — asks for a list. It's a record of what Shelf believes; confirming that against the shelf itself is an audit.

Asset Distribution ​

Answers: how is the fleet spread across categories, locations and statuses? Tiles: Total Assets, Total Value, Categories, Locations. Filters: none. Chart: yes.

The one-screen shape of the workspace. Mostly useful for spotting the thing you didn't expect — half the value sitting in one location, or a category with 200 items in it that should have been three categories.

Asset Utilization ​

Answers: how much of the available time is each item actually working? Tiles: Avg. Utilization, Highly Utilized (>70%), Underutilized (<30%), Total Booking Days. Filters: category, location. Chart: yes.

Utilisation is booked days divided by days in the timeframe, as a percentage. Two cautions before you act on it: gear that's deliberately spare (the backup desk, the second generator) should look under-used, and anything added part-way through the timeframe reads low simply because it wasn't there for the whole window.

Idle Assets ​

Answers: what hasn't moved in a month or more? Tiles: Idle Assets, % of Inventory, Idle Value, Avg. Days Idle. Filters: category, location.

Idle means 30-plus days with no booking and no check-out. This is the sell-it, sub-hire-it or find-out-why list — and, read alongside an audit's missing list, it's a decent early warning that something has quietly walked.

Asset Activity Summary ​

Answers: what has actually happened to this gear — edits, custody changes, bookings? Tiles: Total Activities, Custody Changes, Booking Activities, Most Active. Filters: a specific asset, category. Chart: yes.

The one you run when there's a question about a particular item: filter to that asset and the timeframe in question and you get its history in one place, ready to export.

Custody ​

Custody Snapshot ​

Answers: who is holding what, right now, and for how long. Tiles: Assets in Custody, Team Members, Total Value, Avg. Days Held. Filters: team member, location.

Run this before a quiet week, at the end of a season, and whenever a freelancer finishes up. Anything held for an implausibly long time is usually a custody nobody released rather than gear that's genuinely still out — see Kits & custody for why custody and a booking are different things.

Everything on this site is written by Artefact Group for our own installation. Shelf is a fork of the AGPL-3.0 licensed Shelf.nu project — for upstream’s own documentation, see docs.shelf.nu.

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