Section 3.3: Work Orders

A Work Order is a booking container that lives inside a Work Package. It's where you book personnel (internal team members, roster crew, or outside freelancers) and physical resources (gear, kits, vehicles, rooms) for specific dates, times, and a location.

1. Structure of a Work Order

Work orders are housed inside individual Work Packages and lock down the operational details of a shoot day, campaign sprint, or review session:

• Title & Notes: Scope of work, directions, and guidelines.
• Timeline: Start and end dates/times, supporting both hourly scheduling and all-day events.
• Location: A physical address or remote workspace link.
• Status: Tracks where the booking stands. Available statuses include Draft, Confirmed, In Progress, On Hold, Wrapped, Completed, and Cancelled. In Progress and Wrapped update automatically based on the work order's dates.

2. Booking Personnel

When adding people to a Work Order, you can add:

• Internal Team Members: Staff already active in your organization.
• Roster Crew: Freelancers already on your private roster.
• External Emails: New freelancers you invite by entering their email address.

How each is booked differs:

• Internal team members and roster crew are booked immediately. Adding them to a work order sets their booking status straight to Confirmed — there's no separate accept or decline step, since they're already part of your organization or roster.
• External email invitations go through a tracked invite cycle. When you invite someone by email who isn't already on the platform, ABRAM sends an invitation and records when it was sent. That invitation shows as pending until the person responds and accepts it.

3. Rates and Budget Tracking

Compensation is set directly on the booking, not resolved automatically from elsewhere:

• Personnel rates: You set or confirm each person's rate when you add them to the work order.
• Resource rates: Gear, kits, and vehicles carry their own daily or hourly rate from your organization's inventory.
• Running cost: As you add people and resources, the work order shows a projected total cost, and warns you if it's on track to exceed the parent Work Package's budget.

4. Availability Conflict Checking

To help prevent double-booking, ABRAM checks availability as you build a work order. Personnel and resources are treated differently:

Personnel Conflicts (Soft Warnings)

• If a crew member you're adding is already booked elsewhere for an overlapping time, ABRAM flags the conflict.
• This does not block you from saving. You'll see a "Book anyway?" confirmation, so you can decide whether to proceed or adjust the schedule.

Resource & Kit Conflicts (Hard Blocks)

• Physical resources — gear, kits, vehicles, and rooms — are enforced more strictly.
• If a resource is already fully booked for the dates you've selected, ABRAM blocks you from saving the work order with an availability error.
• You'll need to choose different gear or shift the booking's dates before you can save.

A per-day conflict timeline gives you a visual view of overlapping bookings across the work order's dates.

5. Resources, Kits, and Locations

ABRAM keeps your physical inventory, kit assignments, and project locations in sync with your work orders:

• Kit Expansion: Assigning a pre-built kit to a work order automatically expands it into its individual items, so each piece is tracked on its own.
• Kits Move Together: Rescheduling the work order moves the whole kit as a group, keeping it from being split apart.
• Location Auto-Fill: Assigning a room or studio resource automatically fills in the work order's Location field.
• Reserve and Release: Confirming a work order reserves its resources and places holds on crew calendars. Completing or wrapping the work order releases those resources and calendar holds.

6. Timesheet Auto-Population

To streamline payments, ABRAM generates draft time entries from your Work Orders:

• Automatic Entry Generation: Once a Work Order is active or wrapped, the system spreads its scheduled hours across the booking's days and creates draft time entries.
• Manual Protection: If you manually edit hours on a time entry, ABRAM won't overwrite your changes.
• Cleanup on Removal: If you remove someone from a Work Order, their draft time entries for that booking are cleaned up automatically.

7. Handy Shortcuts

• Call Sheets: You can create a call sheet directly from a work order, carrying over its crew, resources, and location.
• Quick Access: Opening a project through a work-order link takes you straight into that work order, so you don't have to hunt for it.