Grouping Identical Items

Some kit you own one of. Some kit you own fifty of. Fifty hi-vis vests used to mean fifty rows in your inventory, and no sensible way to ask for four of them when planning an event.

Groups fix that. Group identical items together and they show as a single row in your inventory, and can be requested by quantity -- "4 hi-vis vests" -- instead of picking four items off a list. Underneath, each vest is still its own item with its own asset number, QR code and condition history.

Creating a Group#

There are three ways in, depending on where you're starting from. All three are quartermaster and group admin only.

Whichever route you take, you give the group a name -- "Hi-vis vests (adult)" -- and that's the name leaders will see when they book.

What Your Inventory Looks Like#

A group appears as one row showing its name and how many items it holds. The status column summarises the whole group at a glance -- "9 available, 2 out, 1 in repair" -- so you can see the state of fifty vests without scrolling past fifty rows.

Click the row to expand it and see every item underneath, each with its own asset number and status. Everything you could do with an individual item you can still do from there.

Filters and search work on the items, not just the group name. Search an asset number and the group it belongs to comes back; filter by Available and the group's count narrows to just the ones that are actually free.

Requesting from a Group#

When a leader builds an equipment request, groups appear in the list alongside ungrouped kit. Pick a group and a quantity box appears -- set it to 4 and Scoutworks picks four items that are genuinely free for those dates and shows you which ones, by asset number.

Two things worth knowing:

• Choose your dates first. Until there are dates on the request, Scoutworks can't tell what's free, so groups stay unavailable to pick.
• You can still pick a specific item. Expand the group in the request list and choose an individual vest by asset number -- useful when one of them is the one with the name tape on it.

If someone else books the same kit while you're still filling in your request, Scoutworks swaps your picks for other free ones and tells you what changed. If there aren't enough left, it says so rather than letting you submit a request that can't be met.

Approvals, checkouts and packing lists all handle groups too -- the packing list prints the group name with its quantity and lists the individual asset numbers beneath, so whoever is loading the minibus can tick them off.

Quantity Boxes on Single Items#

You may have seen a quantity box when requesting an ordinary item -- a single tent, say. That box has been removed, because it never did anything: a tent is one tent, and asking for three of it only ever reserved the one.

Quantity now appears in exactly one place: on a group, where it's real. If you need to book several of something, group them first.

Groups and Sets Are Different Things#

These two sound similar and aren't:

A set shows a Set of 20 label and has one asset number for the whole bag. A group shows an item count and has an asset number for each item inside it.

Removing Things from a Group#

To take a single item out, open its detail page and click Remove from group. To break up the whole thing, use Ungroup on the group's row.

Neither deletes anything. The items stay in your inventory exactly as they were, just listed separately again, and any requests already made against them are unaffected.

What's next#

• Managing Your Equipment Inventory -- adding, editing, duplicating and importing kit
• Equipment Requests and Approvals -- how requests reach your quartermaster
• Checkouts and Returns -- getting kit out of the store and back again