Section 3.5: Equipment & Resource Management

The Resource Management platform (found under Resources in the producer sidebar) is the centralized dashboard for tracking, organizing, and scheduling physical assets. This includes production gear (camera packages, lighting kits), studio spaces, stages, and vehicles. It is organized into three tabs: Inventory, Kits, and Calendar.

Resource Management comes in three parts. Resources itself, meaning inventory, kits, the resource calendar and packing lists, starts on the Pro plan and is capped at 80 items. Advanced logistics and bookings is on the Studio plan. Gear checkout, meaning vaults, checkout requests, approvals and returns, along with the barcode scanning that happens inside it, is on the SMB / Enterprise plan:

If Resources does not appear in your sidebar, your plan does not include it. Talk to your organization owner about moving to a plan that does.

1. Inventory Management

The Inventory tab is the primary directory of all physical resources owned by your organization.

Adding and Categorizing Assets

To add a new asset:

1. Click the Add Resource button, or use the Quick Add row at the top of the inventory list for fast, single-line entry.
2. Provide details:
   • Name: The identifier of the gear (e.g., "Sensa FX6 - Body #1"). A Global Catalog Search offers AI-powered name suggestions as you type, pulling from a shared catalog of common equipment. Select Custom if you'd rather enter the item manually instead of picking from the catalog.
   • Category: Choose from Equipment, Camera, Lighting, Audio, Grip, Electrical, Vehicle, Wardrobe, Props, Set Dec, Special FX, Location, Studio, Expendable, or Other.
   • Location: Select where the asset is stored (managed under Organization Settings).
   • Day Rate / Hourly Rate: The replacement or internal billing cost, used for project budget estimation.
   • Serial Number & Barcode: Operational and tracking identifiers.
   • Purchase Date & Purchase Price: Acquisition details, useful for depreciation and insurance records.
   • Point of Contact: Assign the person responsible for the asset.
   • Custom Fields: Organization-defined fields for any additional details your team wants to track.
   • Quantity: Define how many identical items you own. If you would rather track each one separately, see Individual Units below.
3. Once saved, the asset receives an auto-generated Asset ID and its card displays a Utilization %, showing how often the item is booked relative to its availability.

Opening a piece of equipment takes you to its own full page rather than a side panel, so there is room for its bookings, its history, and its details together.

Individual Units

Identical items can be tracked as a quantity or as individual units. Ten matching lights can be ten tracked units instead of a count of ten, and each unit carries its own Serial Number, Condition, and history. Use units when you need to know which specific piece of kit went out on which job, and a plain quantity when you do not.

Maintenance History

An item keeps a running record of what has happened to it. Servicing, damage, and repairs all stay on the item, so the state it is in today is readable alongside how it got there.

Bulk Actions

For large studios and rental houses, ABRAM supports bulk operations:

• Bulk Import: Click the Import button. You can upload a CSV/TSV/TXT file or directly paste tab-separated spreadsheet data.

  [!NOTE] The system does not currently offer a downloadable spreadsheet template. Instead, a column formatting helper is displayed in the import window showing the expected headers, which include details such as Name, Type, Quantity, Serial Number, Barcode, Condition, Daily Rate, and Identifier. Only the Name field is required.

• Bulk Edit: Select multiple assets using checkboxes, then click Edit [X]. You can update Status, Condition, Location, Daily Rate, and Hourly Rate in bulk. Category is not included in bulk edits and must be changed per item.
• Barcode Scanner & Batch Allocate: Scan barcodes to quickly look up or check out assets, and allocate multiple items to a project at once. Barcode scanning and batch allocation are part of the SMB / Enterprise plan, because scanning happens inside gear checkout.

2. Kit Building

The Kits tab allows you to bundle related individual resources into predefined creative packages.

Instead of booking twenty separate items for every shoot, you can assemble them once as a Kit and book the entire package with a single click. ABRAM also includes an AI Kit Builder that can automatically suggest package compositions.

Assembling a Kit

1. Navigate to the Kits tab and click Create Kit (or use the AI Kit Builder).
2. Name the kit (e.g., "A-Camera Interview Kit") and add a description.
3. Browse your inventory list and add individual components (e.g., Camera body, Prime lenses, Tripod, Monitor, Batteries).
4. Save the kit. The system calculates a combined package rate, which can be overridden with a custom bundle rate.

Kit Availability Logic

When a Kit is booked, the system automatically creates resource allocations for all constituent individual assets on those dates.

[!NOTE] Planned Feature: Kit completeness tracking is currently in development. At present, if a constituent item is booked elsewhere, overallocation conflicts are highlighted on the individual resource cards and timeline, but the Kit itself will not be flagged as "Incomplete" in the main Kits index. Modifying or deleting a kit allocation in the calendar automatically updates or deletes all sibling items in that kit booking group.

3. Resource Calendar & Bookings

The Calendar tab provides a visual timeline of all asset bookings across your projects.

Folder Organization

To prevent clutter, resources can be nested in folders directly from the Calendar tab:

• Creating Folders: Click New Folder, name the folder, and select the category.
• Moving Assets: Use the folder selection menu on any asset row to move it into a specific folder (e.g., nesting "Sensa 24-70mm GM Lens" inside a "Lenses" folder).

Scheduling Assets

• Draggable Timeline: Resources are listed down the left side, with dates spanning the top. You can view daily, weekly, or monthly schedules.
• Filter Bar: Filter calendar schedules by Category (e.g., view only Studio Stages), Location (e.g., Gear Locker A), or Folder.
• Creating Bookings: Click and drag across date blocks next to any asset to create a booking hold, which links directly to a Work Order.
• Work Order Details: Click on a calendar block to view the linked Work Order, Project Title, and the Assigned Operator.

Timeline Rescheduling & Location Syncing

• Rescheduling: Dragging a calendar booking block for a resource that is linked to a work order will shift the entire work order date range and open the work order confirmation panel. Dragging standalone allocations will prompt the unified event settings window.
• Address Synchronization: When allocating a resource of type "Location" or "Studio" to a work order, the system automatically synchronizes the resource location address to the Location field on the linked work order.

4. Packing Lists

A packing list belongs to a project and builds itself from the gear that project has actually booked, so anything added during prep appears on the list without anyone having to remember to add it.

Each line moves through six states, and ABRAM records who moved it and when:

Because the list is generated from bookings, a late gear change on the project shows up on the list on its own.

5. Conflict Detection & Safety Rules

ABRAM implements strict checks to ensure logistics run smoothly:

• Availability Is Derived from Bookings: Whether a piece of kit reads as Available, Reserved, or Out is worked out from what is booked against it rather than set by hand. You can still override the status manually when something needs holding back.
• Double-Booking Alerts (Hard Constraint): If a manager attempts to reserve or check out an asset that is already allocated on another project exceeding the owned quantity, the system blocks the save operation and throws a friendly alert: Insufficient resource availability for "[Resource Name]" during requested dates.
• Soft Capacity Conflicts: For scheduling flexibility, overallocated resources generate soft capacity conflict records (Resource Overallocated) that appear on the project dashboard and calendar timeline.
• Transit Buffer Days (Planned Feature): The Transit Buffer Days option can be configured in Organization Settings (e.g., 1 buffer day). Active blocking of prep/shipping days in availability checks is in development.
• Needs Repair Lockout (Planned Feature): Damaged or needs maintenance items display their status as Blocked or Maintenance in the dashboard, and the item's maintenance history records how it got there. Direct scheduling lockouts preventing conflicting allocations are in development.